


the bird who became a wolf

by bwyn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Big Damn Heroes, Fate & Destiny, Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Siblings, M/M, Minor Character Death, Not Really Character Death, Pirates, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2019-07-16 14:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 54,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16087577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwyn/pseuds/bwyn
Summary: That it’s cold is Keith’s first thought as he plummets. The tower is tall. The sky is dark; the snow is not. Clouds the colour of bruises and sickly men. He falls, and falls, until the first roof, and the second, and the ground. It’s cold, he thinks again.He does not feel the snout of a dog worriedly nudging his limp hand, nor does he hear footsteps over cobblestones. He thinks he might dream the words, though, as he sinks into a heavy fog.“Death is not your destiny today, little sparrow.”***An AU in which Keith never expected to be tasked with saving the world, but according to a centuries old blind man, it’s his destiny.





	1. little sparrow

**Author's Note:**

> who can guess the AU??? :3cccc

The story begins with a music box.

It’s an unassuming thing, with fake gold inlay on all eight sides, but even before that box sitting pretty among other false wonders, there’s two brothers huddled tight against the winter chill. When the leaves began falling, Shiro had the foresight to prepare for a season during which they wouldn’t have reliable shelter. He’s the only reason Keith is able to sleep now, and dream even.

Until there’s a threadbare mitt jostling him awake, anyway.

“Hey, little sparrow. Hey. Wake up.”

Keith feels as though his eyelashes have been frosted shut. Instead of going through the motions of thawing and opening them, he grunts.

“Little sparrow,” Shiro says again, a smile in his voice. “You know what day it is, right? What’d you get me?”

“Nrgh,” says Keith.

“That’s not a proper gift. C’mon now—”

Keith’s eyes open—he’s pretty sure he loses a few lashes—to shoot the black-haired teen a glare. “Why don’t you have the sense to sleep in on your birthday like everyone else?”

Shiro snorts and leans back on the thin rug that serves as their shared mattress. Watery sunlight filters through the cracks in their little hut’s roof and glints off the snow that’s found its way onto the floor. Keith sits up and tucks his feet in; his dream had been a warm one, he remembers, but maybe that’s because his extremities had become numb during the night.

“No time to sleep,” says Shiro. “I’m of age now—they can’t turn me away at the docks.”

Keith frowns. “You’re not really going to, are you?”

“It’s the only constant work a streetrat is gonna get,” Shiro reminds him with a wry grin. “I’m sixteen, I’ve got the muscle. I can be useful and they’ll pay me— _proper_ , this time.”

Keith doesn’t want to talk about the last time, doesn’t want to remember it. Last time had been bruises seen and unseen, and the smell of alcohol. Dark stories travelled from the docks. This time, however, Shiro could use his strength and not just his wit, and surely with both he would return home safe every night.

“Well, I didn’t get you anything,” Keith begins, and Shiro doesn’t look surprised in the least, “but how about we celebrate your last day as a kid—or first as an adult, whatever.”

Shiro smiles. “Sounds wonderful.”

They leave their ramshackle hut where it squats just off a forgotten courtyard. The only other visitors besides Shiro and Keith are the occasional chickens, who have the ill luck of becoming dinner should the brothers scrounge up enough wood for a lasting cooking fire. Those are the good nights, but no chickens wander during the coldest months.

Keith realizes he’s not being followed halfway to the alley that serves as their exit. He turns to see Shiro with one hand on the low stone wall separating their courtyard from the sprawling buildings down the hill. Towering above it all on the cliffside end of town perches Castle Fairfax, all white stone and spires, a beacon of wealth and comfort—to most people, anyway. To Keith, it just seems lonely. Maybe it has something to do with the passing of the lord’s wife and young son, and his subsequent refusal to leave the confines of his lordly halls.

“Shiro, c’mon,” says Keith as he lowers his gaze from the far-off mansion, and Shiro slowly does the same.

They’ve lived in Bowerstone’s Oldtown their whole lives, from the underfunded orphanage in the industrial sector, to the more promising residential alleyways. Keith knows which houses to walk near in order to catch wafts of heat from their woodstoves; he knows which guards to avoid, and which might send him on errands for a coin; he knows who might give him a heel of yesterday’s bread, rock hard but food nonetheless. Shiro, too, knows when to charm and when to take pity. Maybe they haven’t flourished, but they’ve survived.

Today, however, is a milestone. At the very least, Keith thinks, today they should be allowed to thrive.

Through a narrow alley slick with ice, ducking under a crumbling stone arch, Keith and Shiro step out onto a sideroad lined with squashed, sagging houses. Only the wooden beams crisscrossing well above Keith’s head seem to be keeping the townhouses from sinking forward onto the cobblestones. A pigeon coos at Keith from its perch on one of these beams, training a beady eye on him as the brothers pass below. Keith considers the likelihood of catching one for a birthday supper.

“Looks busier than usual,” notes Shiro as they come up on Oldtown’s main square. The cobbles are loose and the mortar needs to be repaired, but it’s the busiest part of the quarter and the brothers’ main haunt.

A crowd has gathered off to one side, where a stranger set up a wooden carriage with doors thrown wide. All sorts of interesting knickknacks have been put on display. Keith wrinkles his nose at the gaudiness of fake gold and jewels, but moreso at those that adorn the man beaming at the crowd from among his eccentricities.

“Lads, ladies and gentlefolk,” he begins with a flourish to either end of the small crowd, “I have travelled far and wide gathering wondrous and mysterious objects, which I now offer to you at the modest price of five gold.” His eyes scan the people, gauging the interest, before stepping out of the view of a long tarnished mirror. “Consider this: truly a magical mirror. As long as you look into it, you will surely be beautiful!”

Keith snorts and Shiro nudges him with an elbow. The old vegetable seller sticks his hand in the air with an enthusiastic, “I’ll take it!”

The man on the stage dips in a shallow bow. “Excellent choice. Now just remember: the magic only works in complete darkness.”

The vegetable seller doesn’t seem to find anything wrong with that; his rot-toothed smile is wide. Several others, however, tilt their heads as they work through that conundrum. Keith sees the moment they forget to think of the scam when the man claps his hands and flourishes a gesture to a box sitting on a thrice-fixed shelf.

“Now _this_ is truly a marvel,” he says, as if he himself is awe-inspired by it. “This small, unassuming box is actually a device created by the ancients—as created by the Old Kingdom rulers themselves!” The gold inlay—false, _obviously_ —glints under the weak winter sun. Something tugs in Keith’s belly. “Turn the handle three times, and you’ll be granted a single wish.”

Interested parties press in close the same moment Keith tries to shun his sudden discomfort and scoffs, “There’s no such _thing_ as magic.” Shiro lays a hand on his arm to steer him to the edge of the crowd.

“That so?” Someone rumbles from beside Keith. He looks up to sneer—bad habit—but the dusty-robed stranger continues, “We live in grim times indeed, if the young are too cynical to believe in magic.”

“Magic is for hopeless fools,” snaps Keith. “Especially ones that’ll cough up five gold for garbage. Did you even take a look at the trash he’s hawking? The scope thing has twine holding it together!”

“Did I take a look?” This seems to amuse the stranger greatly. He tips back his head slightly, the shadows of his deep hood lifting just enough that Keith sees milky white eyes.

“You’re blind,” Shiro says in surprise and altogether too loudly.

The stranger inclines his head just slightly, though the motion allows a long silvery braid to fall free from around his neck. “I am? Interesting. I thought someone had just turned off the lamps all this time.”

Shiro flushes in embarrassment and says nothing. Keith scowls at the man; blind or not, shaming Shiro is off-limits for anyone not family. “Shove off!”

“You call that music box garbage,” says the stranger, ignoring Keith, “because that is what the seller thinks. He does not know what he has stumbled upon. But you have an inkling, do you not? Some part of you wants to believe it’s magic.”

Keith scowls so fiercely his jaw aches. He turns to tell Shiro they ought to boot the man in the shin and take off, but stops when he sees the curious glint in his brother’s eyes.

“You...really think it could be?” Shiro asks softly.

The stranger tips his head towards them, the shadows consuming his eyes and a solemn mouth. “For five gold coins, you could find out.”

“For five gold coins, we could eat for a week.”

With a shrug, the stranger steps away from them and begins to turn. He pauses, the hem of his hood tilted towards them. “And you would still be no closer to living that dream of yours—no closer to the inside of that beautiful castle.”

Seeing Shiro visibly stiffen, Keith raises his fists right then and there, but the odd man is already walking away. Keith drops his hands with a sigh.

“Shoulda socked him in the nads, right Shiro?” says Keith. “Shiro? Oi.”

“What if it _is_ real?” murmurs Shiro, watching the stranger’s back with glazed eyes.

Keith stares at him. “You really believe that chickenshit?”

“I—I don’t know.” Shiro tears his gaze away to look at Keith, brow knit. “Isn’t it enough to dream?”

It’s one thing to wish, but another to believe, and Keith has had too many disappointments to allow himself to put his scant hope and even scanter money in a _box_ . He opens his mouth to say something undoubtedly rude, but his brain stops him. He purses his lips. It’s Shiro’s birthday, his last day before spending all the rest at the docks. Regardless of the outcome, Keith wants to remember Shiro smiling and excited—a _kid_ still.

“Alright,” says Keith, “let’s get that box.”

* * *

Together the brothers make a beeline for the guard post. Usually they have luck there, and today seems an especially lucky day as the guard on duty, a portly man that insists everyone call him Varkon, is looking about nervously.

“Mornin’ Var,” says Shiro with a winning smile. “You doing alright?”

The guard flinches and clears his throat. “Of—of course. What do you, uh, kids want?”

“We’re looking for work. Just wanted to see if you needed a hand with anything.”

“O-oh, I see. I’m not sure I actually need any, um...help today.”

“Yeah?” Shiro leans forward, his mouth curling down sympathetically. “Y’know, we can keep our mouths shut. Just sayin’.”

Varkon looks down at Shiro with nervously pursed lips for a long moment, then Keith watches him break under the teen’s compassionate stare.

“Alright, alright,” says Varkon in a hushed voice. He glances side to side, then leans forward. “Some...documents have, uh…mysteriously vanished from my possession. I can’t exactly leave my post, but if you could go find them for me, I’d be more than willing to give you a copper bit.”

Shiro cocks his head, attaches his most charming smile, and Keith zones out after that. He’s tried mimicking how his brother does it, but frankly he’s got no patience for bargaining with anything but his fists. They leave the extremely sweaty guard with the promise of a gold piece.

“So, what’re we even looking for?” asks Keith.

“Five arrest warrants,” says Shiro after shooting his brother a wry grin. “Is it really that hard to pay attention once in awhile?”

“That’s what I’ve got you for.”

Shiro’s grin slips a fraction. “Yeah, I guess so. Well, where shall we take a gander next?”

“Are we really gonna be able to get five gold by the end of the day?” Keith squints at the sky; the winter sun already seems far too high for the morning. That’s another thing he misses besides the warmth of summer: long days. “Maybe we should split up.”

“You sure?” Shiro asks skeptically. “You won’t get into a fight?”

Keith rolls his eyes before dropping his gaze back down. “I won’t. I’ll be too busy busting my ass.”

“Sure?”

“Surest.”

“Well. Alright then.” Shiro tugs his red scarf from his neck and, before he can protest, loops it around Keith’s. “Stay warm. Stay out of trouble. Stay safe. I’ll meet you back here before sundown.”

“Worrywart,” mutters Keith.

“What was that?”

“Nothing! Sundown, got it.”

* * *

The issue—and it’s a small one, for certain—is that Keith fully intends to stay safe and out of trouble (see: no fighting) but it isn’t _his_ fault nobody else got the message. Specifically speaking, the other boys in the neighbourhood, both poor and slightly less poor, have taken to using the alleys as their haunts, going so far as bullying even the homeless from the area. Luckily for them, the shadows that lurk in such places don’t care about the specific alley they’ve chosen as their territory. Unluckily for everyone else (but mostly Keith), the kids have gotten incredibly obnoxious about it. It wouldn’t be the first time Keith has gotten into fights to teach them some humility.

But, well, for _Shiro_ , Keith wasn’t going to pull any of his shit today.

If only the dog hadn’t been there.

Not even ten minutes since parting from his brother, Keith finds the mutt cowering amongst trash, and a half circle of youths with stones and sticks. Keith already knows he’s going to intervene, but he doesn’t plan on diving in fists flying until the oldest boy steps in with a kick to the dog’s ribs.

It yelps and tries to scramble further back. The boys laugh.

“Hey chickenshit!”

Keith’s first punch lands solid on the teen’s nose. His second breezes past his cheekbone. Then there’s a knee in Keith’s gut and he goes stumbling into a pile of dirty snow.

“What’s your problem?!” the teen shouts all nasal-like, a hand at his bleeding nose. He’s got a few years and even more inches on Keith, but his eyes are watering and his free hand shaking. The rest of the group look on in various states of shock and uncertainty.

Keith rises to his feet and curls his hands into fists, shunning the ache already growing in his knuckles. “You think kicking a dog makes you tough?” he snaps. “Let’s see how you do with my foot up your ass!”

When all is said and done, what Keith lacks in height and muscle he makes up for with tenacity. The gang of red-nosed boys leave, their leader rather tearful, but Keith ends up back in the filthy snow with blood staining his brother’s scarf from a split lip and a missing tooth.

“He’s gonna be so mad,” Keith mumbles.

A wet something sticks itself in Keith’s ear. He flinches back, clapping a hand over his ear and jarring his sore head, but it’s just the dog. Pink tongue lolling, the mutt sits closer than strictly necessarily to its saviour. Seeing it up close, it doesn’t look much older than a pup despite its size and intimidating teeth, all big clumsy paws and large ears. Keith wrinkles his nose.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

The dog whuffs gently.

“So… you can go now.”

The dog doesn’t go. Keith sighs. Cautiously, he shifts his feet beneath himself and stands, head throbbing dully at the change in altitude. At his feet, the mutt waits patiently, tail wagging. Keith huffs another sigh and tries to wave it off.

“Go find someplace safer to scavenge,” says Keith before turning and walking away.

He can hear the dog following him, but he resolutely does not turn around as he leaves the alley. The cobblestones even out here, though some are more well worn where foot traffic has taken an obvious bias. One subtle path leads to a hole in the wall tavern, and another to a set of stone steps. Keith pokes around the area, looking for garbage that might actually be important city guard documents, but finds nothing. He moves on to the next courtyard over.

Beneath a bench he finds a balled up bit of paper. In no time at all, he’s got damp knees and muddy hands, and a crumpled advertisement for Dr. Faustus Molar’s solid oak teeth. He tosses the ad away with a disgusted noise. All the while, the dog lingers like a vengeful ghost—except with far more tail wagging and zero malice. So really, not at all like a vengeful ghost. Maybe a baby duck.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen any arrest warrants hanging about?” drawls Keith with a sidelong glance at the dog. It cocks its head to one side, then the other. Keith sighs. “Didn’t think so.”

With a snort, the dog abruptly pulls an about face and bounds out of the courtyard. Keith watches it go with eyebrows drifting skyward.

“Bye, then,” he says before going back to his search.

The courtyard yields nothing, nor does its neighbour, and Keith recognizes when he’s about to snap from the lack of success. He chooses to redirect his efforts into finding odd work to scour up a gold piece or two.

* * *

The sun is beginning to slip behind the rooftops by the time Keith is returning to the square with two arrest warrants in hand and a pocket clinking with a tarnished pair of gold coins. One of the warrants he claimed off a sleeping beggar on the street, while another had been used as a shopping list. Feeling particularly accomplished, Keith takes a shortcut down a tangle of alleys squashed between houses and shops. He’s stopped by the sight of the mutt sitting at the mouth of the last, ears floppy and tail wagging upon seeing him, as if it’d been waiting with the knowledge he’d come this way.

Keith opens his mouth to tell the dog to move on when he notices there’s something in its mouth. “What’s that you’ve got?”

The dog’s tail wags harder and prances up to him, depositing a slush- and drool-sodden paper in his hand. Once he’s peeled one corner from the other, Keith finds himself looking down at a grimy-faced sketch of a man with eyes bugging out and a giant mole front and center on his forehead—a third arrest warrant. The dog wags harder.

Keith looks at the pup. “Uh. Thanks. How…? Ah, nevermind.”

He turns into the alley, and this time when the dog follows he doesn’t mention it. The main square is just up ahead when a shadow falls across the mouth of the alley—a gangly-looking woman in robes too thin for winter. The smile she aims at Keith instantly puts him on his guard.

“You and I’ve been lookin’ for the same things,” she says, pointing with a cracked nail at the papers stuffed into Keith’s waistband. “How’s about you hand ‘em over and I slide you a gold bit for your trouble?”

Keith cocks his head to the left. “But the guard is offering the same.”

“Yes,” she says. “That’s why you ought to give ‘em here instead.”

“Which I’d only benefit from if Shiro didn’t find the other two warrants.” Keith cocks his head to the right. “But I’d bet he did, so really, if you wanted them that bad you should offer me more.”

The woman’s smile tightens. “I’m offerin’ you a safe deal, boy, you better take it before you make trouble.”

“What kinda trouble?”

“Look here—“

“Ah, nevermind,” interrupts Keith, “I suddenly find myself not interested. Good day to you, madam.”

He steps forward as if to pass her and the woman tenses immediately. A hand slides out of view to a hidden garter. Keith wondered if these are the only copies of the warrant available, and if they should squeeze another coin out of Varkon for their trouble. He’s preparing to make a break for it when the dog jumps infront of him with a rippling snarl. The woman reels back, the whites of her eyes showing; even Keith stumbles at the sudden viciousness. Something about the mutt’s teeth is more persuasive than Keith’s attitude—with a shaky sneer, the woman backs out of the alley and disappears around the corner.

“Nice save,” Keith mutters to the dog, whose hackles lower with a proud prance of its paws.

They find Shiro waiting near a house whose woodstove burns as often as the house loses heat. He’s already got papers in his hand, and Keith carefully adds the grotty damp one to the top of the pile.

“Where’d you get ‘em?” asks Keith, adding his coins to the small collection in Shiro’s palm.

“Took a stick to some beetles in a warehouse,” says Shiro, “and passed on an… interesting… poem to a lady. You get into any trouble?”

“Not at all,” Keith lies. “Helped a lady keep some booze from her friend, got a dog, did some posing for an artist.”

“What was that?”

“Did some posing—”

Shiro silences him with a look, and Keith has to watch his brother’s attention fall to the dirt-caked pup peeking out from behind his legs. Slowly, Shiro looks back up.

“We can’t keep a dog,” he says.

“That’s what _I_ said.”

“To the dog?”

“Well. Yeah.” Keith attempts a winning smile, but all it seems to do is make Shiro squint at him and frown even deeper.

“Are you missing a tooth?” he asks.

Keith purses his lips at once but Shiro is already grabbing him by the face. At his feet, the mutt does nothing but watch, tail wagging traitorously, as Shiro sticks his fingers into Keith’s mouth and pries it open.

“You’re missing a tooth,” Shiro deadpans.

Keith drools. “Uh. Ah.”

Grimacing, Shiro yanks his hands away and wipes them on his already filthy trousers. “You _really_ need to stop getting into fights, little sparrow.”

“I told you to stop calling me that,” Keith gripes after spitting the taste of Shiro’s dirty fingers onto the ground.

“What was that, little sparrow?”

“It happened one time, okay!”

“The fight or letting the bird shit on you?”

“I didn’t let it do anything!”

“Of course you didn’t. Little sparrow.” Shiro shakes his head woefully, then his face turns serious. “Does your jaw hurt?”

Fighting not to pout, Keith shakes his head. “Not really. Not anymore.”

“And the dog?”

“Huh?”

“Is the dog hurt?” Shiro cocks an eyebrow. “You had to go and be a hero, didn’t you?”

Keith looks down at the pup, who meets his gaze with pure absolute trust. Weird. “It’s fine. Probably.”

“Good. We still can’t keep it.”

“I know, but…” The tail wagging slows, which does something funny to Keith’s chest. “It can...it can scavenge on its own. We just—I only have to protect it. From those chickenshits around the alley.” He looks up, sticking his tongue in the sore spot of his missing tooth in an effort to stop the heat gathering behind his eyes.

Shiro’s expression isn’t a promising one, looking exactly how he did when Keith still asked if they could buy some sweets. He doesn’t ask anymore, and Shiro doesn’t look like he’s bracing himself to crush a small child’s hopes either—until now.

“And body heat!” Keith blurts out. “An extra body for heat at night can’t hurt. Right?”

For a long moment, Shiro says nothing and his expression holds. Keith forgets how to exhale; the dog’s tail pauses.

“Fine,” says Shiro. He tries to maintain a stern face, but his lips twitch when Keith’s breath whooshes out of him. “It’s your responsibility, got it? But that doesn’t mean you get to fight everyone that tells you your dog is stinky.”

The dog wags with vicious joy at the insult. Keith stands straight. “Got it.”

Shiro levels one last stern look at the both of them before nodding. “Good. Alright. Well.” He looks down at the coins in his hand. He inhales somewhat shakily, excited but trying to hide it. “All we gotta do is… bring the warrants in. And then we’ve got enough.”

“Yeah.” Keith blinks at him. “You gonna do that or just look at them?”

“…That’s enough out of you.”

Grinning, Keith gives his brother a poke in the side as he trots past, the dog at his heels.

* * *

They buy the box without fanfare. Shiro keeps it hidden between the two of them, as if someone might be tempted to nick it. Even the pup seems intent on guarding it. When they reach their courtyard, Shiro sets the box down on the crate they use as a table, then crouches before it with a thoughtful twist of his mouth.

“Three turns,” says Shiro, “and then a wish. Anything you want, Keith?”

“Nuh uh, it’s your gift, your wish.”

“Hm. Well. I may have an idea.” Shiro reaches for the box, holding it steady between his hands. With a stately air, he cranks the handle three times. It looks like it hasn’t been oiled in the entirety of its life as it visibly sticks. When done, Shiro closes his eyes and makes his wish. Keith props his chin up in his palm and listens to the slight grind as the handle tries to turn and play music, but remains voiceless. Shiro’s eyes are open and intent on it now. Both brothers wait and watch.

Nothing happens.

Keith courteously allows a minute to pass before saying, “Probably shoulda bought a good ham instead.”

He feels kind of bad for saying so when Shiro doesn’t respond, eyes locked on the box for a beat longer as if—

Keith doesn’t realize there’s music playing for a second, and it takes him a second longer to notice it’s coming from the box, whose handle has unstuck itself and now spins slowly. A gentle tinkling tune fills the cold air around them—Keith’s just impressed it actually plays.

The music begins to quicken, as does the turning of the handle. The seams at the top of the box appear to be glinting in the dimming light, but it isn’t until the panels split and fall open like a rigid flower that Keith realizes the box is making its _own_ glow. The dog whines.

“What the—“ Keith whispers as the speed of the music quickens his own heart.

When it’s racing, and Keith feels like gasping, the box bursts—not into pieces, but into a ball of light that vanishes and leaves shapes in his eyes.

A beat, then—

“Did it work?” whispers Keith.

Shiro rests a hand on the spot where the box had been. “…I—no, I don’t think so.”

“Huh. Well. Neat show it put on.”

“Yeah,” says Shiro. “Let’s go to bed.”

He doesn’t say much else after a scant supper of hard bread, stoking the fire in silence and making sure it’s strong enough to keep going for much of the night. Keith doesn’t needle him even when he stumbles on the gap step up to their modest home. Together they curl up around the dog and shiver their way to sleep.

* * *

Keith wakes abruptly to the dog growling and Shiro hushing it. There are voices he doesn’t recognize, but they’re deep and serious—grown men, guards. When he sits upright, Keith confirms the presence of three such men, standing just behind the smoldering remains of their fire.

“What d’you want?” Shiro is asking suspiciously, raising his sleep-rough voice above the growls of the dog.

“We’ve orders to fetch you,” says one stranger, his lapels heavy with some sort of ornamentation—a captain of the guard.

“Fetch us,” repeats Shiro, flattening his hand against the dog’s scruff. The growling grows louder.

“To bring you to Castle Fairfax.”

Keith freezes; Shiro definitely freezes. Even the dog’s growl changes to sound rather confused.

Nonplussed by their mute staring, the captain continues, “His lordship wishes to see you—the both of you. If you’ll follow me.”

Shiro finds his voice again to croak, “Right _now?”_

“The sooner, the better.”

“Why?”

“You’re in no trouble. His lordship takes an interest in you and wants to talk.”

The brothers exchange a glance; Keith’s skeptical and suspicious, Shiro’s a bit of both but also hesitantly curious. It’s still Shiro’s birthday—though not technically, since Keith’s sure it’s well past midnight—so he leaves it up to his brother to decide. He isn’t surprised when Shiro gets to his feet and steps down from the shack.

“Alright,” he says.

With a glance over his shoulder, Shiro summons Keith to his side. The mutt huffs.

“You stay here,” Keith says to the pup, the guards already leading Shiro away. “We’ll come back. Probably soon. Don’t let any scum take our spot.”

Obviously reluctant but obedient to a fault, the dog settles itself back down. It watches dejectedly as Keith leaves to catch up with his brother.

* * *

The trio of guards leave them at the grandest set of doors Keith has ever seen.

Keith doesn’t know what he was expecting, entering the castle for the first time as a street urchin. From afar, it was a magnificent thing, made up of material he knew only from the way the sun glinted off its polished edges. This close, Keith sees so much more.

The marble, the grout, the tiles—all of it undeniable in its wealth despite the flecks of wear and tear that any stronghold would acquire over the centuries. Then the doors open, heavy wooden barricades that swing quietly on oiled hinges, and Keith can no longer believe he’s in Bowerstone.

“This way,” says a man in a fine suit. He pivots on his heel, long coattails flapping, and strides off down the deep crimson carpet splitting the massive hall in two.

Keith feels small and insignificant here. Even beaten and bruised in an alley, tossed about by grown men, swatted off by women with willow switches, Keith never felt the way he does now. Those were situations he landed himself in. They were to be expected.

But this?

Every step is an insult to the carpet, every breath sullying the air. Keith has never been more aware of his status as a street rat. He can’t believe such a place is allowed to _exist_ , or rather that he can exist simultaneous to it, two sides of the same world.

He doesn’t notice he’s falling behind, gaze too fixated on the tapestries adorning the walls, until Shiro slows to nudge him with an elbow. “You alright?”

“I’m—” Keith stops to clears his throat; even that sound feels like filth in a hall destined for a choir. “Fine.”

“Really? I’m not,” says Shiro, startling Keith to stare at him. His brother grins somewhat sheepish and shrugs. “This is… a lot to take in, y’know? One tapestry alone could feed us for a year—or _more_.”

Keith’s eyes bug out. Just one tapestry? He seriously considers the likelihood of running from the place with one rolled up under his arm. Probably not. Beside him, Shiro has taken on a glazed expression, a dozen times more powerful in its dreaminess than when he’d only had the music box to stare at. Keith swallows his nerves, once, then twice. On the third try, he gives up. This is Shiro’s dream, and his wish, and he got it somehow. There would be no need for Keith to rip priceless art from the walls.

A glance from the butler has the two boys picking up their pace to catch up. Aside from the guards posted at regular intervals, only one other person occupies the hall, and he’s walking briskly in the opposite direction. He has a head of pure white hair in thick ropes and is wearing something sparkly, arms full of scrolls that could also probably feed the two for a year or five. Keith’s mouth waters at the thought of meat every night.

It isn’t until the man is passing them, several meters away, that Keith realizes it isn’t his clothes that are sparkling, but his skin—wait, no, he’s _glowing_. Keith gapes, falling behind as he turns to watch the man go by. It’s like lightning, he thinks, lancing across dark skin in the midst of a summer storm.  The man casts a look over his shoulder, meets Keith’s awed gaze, and quirks a smile.

Keith doesn’t know what to think; he trots after his brother and the butler quickly, hair on end.

The butler leads them several stories up a broad staircase, at the end of the grand hall, until turning down a side hall with more stairs. Keith eventually loses his sense of direction with the curve of the tower they find themselves in, with no windows and nothing to mark the directions. Finally they reach the top landing, where the butler pauses in front of a set of double doors made of luxurious metals and stained wood. Another item whose pretty price sets Keith’s stomach growling. He wishes they would’ve fed them first.

“Before you go in,” says the butler, looking down his thin nose at them, “there are but two matters I wish to address. The first: when speaking to Lord Zarkon, address him as _my lord_ , and only when spoken to. Do _not_ speak out of turn. Answer _only_ his questions. The second is in regard to Lady Honerva and the young lord—no matter what, do _not_ mention them.” The butler casts an unreadable look at the doors before nodding once to himself. “Now, go inside.”

He opens the doors, motioning for the boys to step in past him as he announces, “The children you called for, my lord.” With a bow, he edges out.

Keith doesn’t hear the door close, because he’s too busy taking in the round room. For much of it, shelves—made to fit the curve of the wall—stretch up high until the ceiling slopes upwards, packed with books and other bits and bobs that Keith have never seen, much less have a name for. At a table covered in loose papers and what appears to be a very old brass telescope, is the Lord Zarkon.

But let Shiro speak to the lord, Keith decides, as his eyes scrape over glass orbs, polished pedestals, leatherbound tomes in various states of wear, gold inlay and—and the _window_.

Keith doesn’t think he’s much the art-appreciating type, but perhaps in this moment he could be. A section of the floor is different in front of it, but Keith doesn’t pay it any mind. The window itself depicts a woman, face solemn and beautiful in colours Keith never would have thought could fit, transparent and smooth against the pale winter night. The woman curls over a single rose, cupping her hands around it as if it’s some fragile important thing. Keith wants to see it in daylight—see the sharp lines striking against cold stone and warm books, forming a gentle organic image.

An elbow digs itself into Keith’s ribs. He flinches and jerks around to glower at Shiro, a curse on the tip of his tongue. It dies when he looks past Shiro’s impatient stare to the amused one of the lord himself.

“Pardon my intrusion of your thoughts,” says Lord Zarkon, dark-eyed and dark-haired with skin the colour of the snow-heavy clouds outside. “I simply asked if you liked it. The window.”

“Oh,” breathes Keith, forcing himself not to look at the window, though he wishes to, desperately. “It’s damn flashy—I mean, it’s b-beautiful.”

Lord Zarkon smiles. “Yes, I think so too.” The skin of his lips stretches oddly; Keith doesn’t think he’s smiled for a very long time.

“As I was telling your brother,” the lord says with a graceful wave towards Shiro, “who admires my home in such a way that reminds me of my own good fortune—perhaps the two of you may come live with me.”

“ _What,_ ” Keith blurts out. Another elbow, but this time Shiro looks both excited and desperate in equal measure. He lays a shaking hand on Keith’s shoulder.

“We would love that very much, m’lord,” Shiro says politely.

Lord Zarkon smiles again and says, “I am glad to hear it. These halls have long missed the sound of laughter.” He rests a hand on his table, using the other to indicate they should turn around. “Behind you there is the reason I called you here. No, not the window—the pedestal beneath it. Lovely, is it not?”

Not nearly so much as the pensieve woman, Keith thinks but doesn’t say. It’s merely a platform, ten men wide, borders etched deep with weird symbols that look like the letters of another land. The center is plain stone.

“All I require from the two of you is that you stand within the circle.” Lord Zarkon motions them in, but Shiro hesitates until the lord says, “I promise it will not hurt you.”

Keith looks from the circle to Shiro and back until his brother takes the first step towards it. With a shrug, Keith bounds up after him so that they enter at the same time. The instant their feet touch the stone it lights up. Keith’s momentum carries him forward to the center of the circle, where he stops to stare at the glow around them.

It’s nothing like candlelight, or that cast by the sun. It’s an unnatural thing, all floating motes of glowing stuff, but it doesn’t feel bad or wrong. Though there is no tinkling melody, it reminds Keith of the music box.

“This is batshit,” whispers Keith—Shiro doesn’t even nudge him.

“Incredible!” cries Lord Zarkon, closer to them now that he pushed himself from his table. He chuckles at the look on Keith’s face. “I told you, it will not hurt you. The light simply means you have the ability of will—that is to say, _magic._ ”

Keith swears again, and this time Shiro does dig his elbow back in.

“Magic, m’lord?”

“Yes, yes. Will is in all living things, and some not so much. Controlling it, to bend it to your, well, will, is an ability many thought extinct—or a myth. This evening, however, you and your brother have proven them all wrong.” Lord Zarkon approaches the circle, a tentative—almost shy—hand extended. “I knew Alfor’s bloodline persisted—I hoped there would be more—but this is—“

The circle sparks red at his touch and Lord Zarkon yanks his hand back with a hiss. Suddenly wild-eyed, he looks from the light to Shiro and Keith standing within it. His teeth bare in a grimace.

“What _are_ you?” Cradling his hand to his chest, the lord turns to scrutinize the books and loose papers on his desk. “One of you,” the lord mumbles, flipping feverishly through his supplies, “one of you is a hero. Not any of the three, no… but the fourth.”

“M’lord?” prompts Shiro rather timidly. Whereas Shiro is fixed on Zarkon, Keith can’t tear his eyes away from his brother, and the uncertainty lining his youthful face.

“This—this is for the best,” murmurs Zarkon.

The first thing Keith notices is Shiro becoming all edges and ice, an arm raising to push him back; the second is the shining metal barrel. Zarkon turns to them, eyes pulling away from the books, lingering on the gun in his hand, resting on the soft glow surrounding both brothers.

“What’re you doing?” snaps Shiro, as if a teenager barely sixteen has the right to demand anything from this lord of lords.

“This is not what I wanted,” says Zarkon, gaze downcast. Solemn. Keith’s seen the same look on the faces of those not yet used to butchering for food. He’s seen it on Shiro, on those rare nights they catch chickens.

The gun lifts. Keith lunges forward to—to do _something,_ anything, but Shiro is in his way. He shoves Keith back, muscling him behind his wide shoulders. Even through the pounding in Keith’s ears, he hears a heavy click. Something heavier is in his throat.

 _Shiro_ , he tries to say, breath hitching like a hook in his chest. His brother takes a step back, pushing Keith against the beautiful stained glass window.

“I cannot allow you to live.” _No. No, please._ “I cannot chance it.” _Wait._ _We’ll leave. Please, we’ll go away_. “I am sorry.”

“Wait—”

 _Crack_.

Shiro’s entire body jolts, Keith’s mind goes blank, and the masterpiece at his back shatters.

That it’s cold is Keith’s first thought as he plummets. The tower is tall. The sky is dark; the snow is not. Clouds the colour of bruises and sickly men. He falls, and falls, until the first roof, and the second, and the ground. _It’s cold_ , he thinks again.

He does not feel the snout of a dog worriedly nudging his limp hand, nor does he hear footsteps over cobblestones. He thinks he might dream the words, though, as he sinks into a heavy fog.

“Death is not your destiny today, little sparrow.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and this meeaaanns i have 2 bnha and 1 more vld fic to finish and publish. someone boot me.
> 
>  
> 
> [me tumblr](http://bitterbeetle.tumblr.com)
> 
>  **EDIT 10/27** : I DIDN'T THINK I WOULD BE SO SLOW WITH THIS IM SO SORRY LMAO


	2. fledgling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After falling from the Lord Fairfax's tower, Keith wakes to a new life and an opportunity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didn't realize how much time had passed since i posted the first chapter i'm sO SORRY LMAO. i've basically just been posting stuff that was already done and just needed editing and fully forgot....about this. :> will i get any faster?? we can all hope. idk how i updated so fast w foreign scenes tbqh that was an anomaly.

The world is a broiling, heaving mass of darkness. It shifts, it throbs, it stretches and contracts, a thing with no end and no beginning. Sometimes it settles, just long enough that Keith thinks he hears things beyond the darkness. His favourite is a soft rushing sound, oddly familiar as though it’s a sound that he _should_ know, but doesn’t. His least favourite is trilling, loud and incessant. The only good to come of it is when it forcefully pierces its way through the black fog.

Eventually light comes back to him in his dreams. They’re cold things, his thoughts as he sleeps—because he must be sleeping, otherwise death was a strange place to be—but they’re familiar too. Keith dreams of their little shack, their fire, their courtyard, coated in winter’s white. He dreams of gunshots and his brother.

When sunlight warms his eyelids, and Keith feels the heaviness of his own body, he already knows: Shiro is dead, and he is alone.

The ceiling Keith finally opens his eyes to is unfamiliar. It has no gaps, and none of the piping that the factory-turned-orphanage was riddled with. Keith frowns at it—or tries to, but his face has forgotten how to use its own muscles. Blinking several times, Keith becomes aware of the tweeting. He doesn’t try sitting up, but slowly tips his head towards the sound coming from his right.

Dappled sunlight dances across the quilt laid across him, coming in via open window, through which Keith can see trees.

He blinks again; the leaves are brilliant green, the sunlight an even richer gold. Keith wonders how much a wealthy man would pay for a painting of such a thing. It takes him a moment longer to realize the tweeting is coming from birds—unknown to him, for they aren’t the city sparrows. Then he feels the fresh coolness of the breeze and understands: this is not winter.

Something creaks beyond Keith’s feet; he sits up in a jolt of movement that feels akin to lifting a full cart (though he’s not done that, but he’s got an imagination). Surprisingly, his arms do not buckle, no matter how they shake. Still, he’s not prepared for an escape, much less a fight.

So it’s with a bizarre sense of relief that Keith recognizes the man stepping into the room.

“You’re up,” the blind man says in such a way that Keith isn’t sure he means _awake_ or _upright_.

“H—“ Keith’s voice cuts out immediately, interrupted by a bout of vicious coughing and heaving breaths between. His throat burns by the time it finally stops.

The man wordlessly pushes a cup of clear water into Keith’s hands. When Keith has the state of mind to accept it, the man takes a seat on a stool by the footboard. His hood rests around his shoulders and back. Despite the braided length of silver hair, his swarthy face is that of a man in his thirties, young but aged by the steady stress of living

“My name is Kolivan,” he says when Keith is mid-sip. “You’ve been sleeping for four months. It’s spring.” He doesn’t give Keith time to consider the passage of that much time. “Currently we are with a caravan staying near the edge of Bower Lake, twenty miles east of Bowerstone itself. What do you remember?”

Overwhelmed, Keith tries to stall for time by taking a long, unnecessarily languid sip of water. All too soon the glass is empty; Kolivan takes it from him and refills it without comment.

“Falling,” rasps Keith, glad at least that speech is not so painful. “Tower. Zarkon.” He pauses, chest constricting. “Sh-Shiro.”

“Do you recall why?”

 _Why_ what? Why he fell? Why Shiro died? Why Zarkon lured them to his towertop study in the first place?

“Magic,” says Keith.

Kolivan nods once, the foggy sheen of his pupils peering through Keith’s brow. “Of which you have much.”

“Zarkon ki— he tried to— he shot us because of it. A couple of no-name kids.” Keith looks down at the glimmer of water, too clean to be boiled from the city’s wells or melted down from snow. “He didn’t need to.”

“He thought you might become a threat,” says Kolivan grimly, “to his plans, those in play now and those for the future. Your continued existence has far reaching consequences. Will you become the threat he feared when he tried to kill you and your brother?”

It’s an invitation; if Keith has power that Zarkon fears, then he should use it against him—use it to take him down. Keith doesn’t know what form magic might take, but that doesn’t stop him from picturing it in his head: his own hands wrapped around a glowing gun, the smooth barrel pointing at a hole in Zarkon’s chest.

“Yes,” says Keith. “I will.”

* * *

Kolivan tells him to rest another few hours, so Keith waits a quarter of one before forcing himself out of bed. Once the sheets fall off him, he realizes he’s wearing a simple outfit of well-worn and patched fabric that he doesn’t recognize as his own. He plucks at it briefly before looking around. The room seems to be an entire caravan, with another window across from him and the door. There’s not much to it but a chest for storage and some clothes hanging up.

Legs shaky, Keith grabs at any available surface to keep himself upright. He feels worse than a baby learning to walk—he _knows_ how, he’s just not strong enough. Gritting his teeth, Keith pushes himself to grab for the door. If he can’t at least do _this_ , then how will he ever get his hands on Zarkon?

The door swings outward and Keith is blasted by the sight of more greenery than he’s ever seen in his life. Having never been outside of the city walls, the most he’d seen were the rustling canopies barely visible over the stone wall of the cemetary. Here, narrow footpaths connect caravans to their neighbours and their little fires. Some have small game—rabbits, chicken-like birds—hanging from string, waiting to be cleaned. People mill about as well, as colourful in their skin and hair as the patchwork clothes they wear. Like the trees, Keith doesn’t remember ever having seen the caravan folk in Oldtown, or if he did, they weren’t wearing five more layers than necessary like these people.

Keith carefully navigates the two narrow steps leading from his room to the ground. A breeze rustles through the trees—ah, wasn’t that the rushing sound he heard while out of it? He strains a moment to try and catch the trilling, but if it was a bird that made the sound, it has long since flown on.

A snuffling sound behind Keith startles him to whip around. The motion upsets his balance, and he falls onto his backside with an undignified yelp. Eye to eye with him is the biggest dog Keith has ever seen. The beast stares at him with sober amber eyes, taking a step forward when Keith leans back on scuffed hands. It cocks its head at him.

“Oh,” says Keith weakly, recognizing the intimidating teeth and scruffy mutt appearance despite its size. “You sure…grew up.”

The dog’s tongue lolls out; it looks like it’s smiling at him, and its tail beats the ground erratically. Before he can say or do anything, the dog bounces the distance between itself and Keith and drops into the boy’s lap as though it’s the size of a rabbit and not a small bear.

“Hi to you too,” mumbles Keith, trying and failing to keep the emotion from his voice. He’d had the dog for less than a day but nevertheless it was family—it _is_ his family, the last of it. Keith resists the desire to bury his face into the mutt’s fur, and instead drags his fingers through its thick scruff until it lets out a satisfied groan.

“Oh shit,” someone says, “is that him?”

“The sleeper? S’gotta be.”

Keith looks over his shoulder with a frown prepared. Standing on the path, holding a number of buckets, are two kids in the many-layered fashion of the caravan people. They’re openly staring at him and the mutt, who is trying to roll over in Keith’s lap despite its bulk.

“What?” snips Keith.

“You’re awake,” says the girl, who looks like her family has stayed firmly tucked in the cold northern countries for generations.

“Obviously,” says Keith.

“Well, you haven’t been for _awhile_.”

“And now I am. So?”

She rolls her eyes and her friend snorts a laugh. “Your being up is the most interesting thing to happen in awhile,” says the boy. “ _Obviously_.”

Keith gives them a onceover. They’re not familiar, even though the boy is of a mixed lineage just as Keith and all the other kids of the city tend to be. The girl he would have recognized immediately, with skin and hair so fair as to be nearly white. Both are several years older by the looks of it.

“So you’ve heard of me?” Keith asks curiously.

The boy snorts again, so loud that he jolts a hand to his hooked nose with a surprised look. Shooting him a flat look, the girl sets her buckets down, water sloshing up the sides, and folds her arms over her chest.

“When you say it like that,” she says, “makes folk assume you’re more important than you are. To us, you’re just a kid that Kolivan suddenly had that’s been sleepin’ for too long.”

Keith forces his face into nonchalance. “No one’s come by?”

She looks like she wants to toss one of her buckets at him. “No. If they had, none of us woulda said a thing, either. We’ve a safe place here.” Her violet eyes narrow at him. “S’long as you’re here, you oughta know that too.”

 _Don’t coddle a loose tongue_ is what Keith hears. The same sentiment is shared among the alley kids, for good or ill.

“’Course,” he says, and after a moment, “Thanks.”

She nods as though satisfied, then says, “I’m Nyma.” She flicks her wrist at the boy beside her. “And this is Rolo.”

“Keith.”

“Pleasure,” she says with another nod. “What about your wolf?”

Keith blinks. “Wolf?” The mutt, having given up on rolling over, has settled with its head in his lap. “It… doesn’t have a name. Just some mutt I picked off the alley.”

“You’re joking,” says Rolo while Nyma gapes. “Some mutt, he says. Oh heavens.”

“What?” snaps Keith defensively.

“That _mutt_ of yours,” says Nyma, “has some strong wolf blood in her. You don’t see it?”

Keith resists the urge to snap that he’s never even _seen_ a wolf, and the creature he’d allowed to chase his heels hadn’t been more than a pup. Certainly, she’s massive, and he didn’t think dogs could get quite that big, but with nothing more to compare her to…

“Oh,” says Keith. The wolfdog blinks up at him, impatient for ear scratches. “Why were you in the gutter, girl?”

The wolfdog doesn’t reply, but Rolo says, “City folk do weird shit. I’ve seen them take in weirder.”

“Hey!” sniffs Nyma, holding her head high.

Rolo rolls his eyes at her. “You’re more roadrat than city girl now.”

“Thanks,” she says dryly before turning back to Keith. “You plan on naming her?”

Keith considers it. The wolfdog certainly looks as though she deserves a fierce name like Annihilator or Evil Lord Slayer, but the way she is currently begging for pets is far more endearing. Keith doesn’t think Fluffy the Destroyer is much of a good name either.

“I’ll keep thinking on it,” he says.

Getting back onto two feet proves a lot more difficult than Keith first thought, but the wolfdog seems to know immediately what it is he requires and presses close to be used as a handhold. Thankful, Keith gives her an extra few pats once he’s upright. Nyma and Rolo take him on a tour of the camp despite Keith insisting he really, _really_ , doesn’t need it. Their pace quickens as soon as they drop off their buckets at a firepit where a woman who looks like neither of them turns a spit.

There are quite a few more caravans than Keith expected, some bigger, some more elaborately decorated. It’s clear which ones have become more permanent fixtures by the tall grass growing over braked wheels, and the tracks in the earth from those that have come and gone. Most of the people they pass greet the kids; they don’t seem surprised to see Keith alongside Nyma and Rolo. The sun is high in the sky when Kolivan finds them skipping stones up the creek.

“Resting, are we?” he asks rather flatly. Keith immediately feels embarrassed.

“I got bored,” says Keith, failing to mention the fact he’d not bothered to wait even a full hour.

The wolfdog wags her tail as Kolivan approaches to loom over the children. “How interested are you in our earlier conversation?”

Feeling Nyma and Rolo’s curious gazes on him, Keith sighs and stands. “Thanks for showing me around,” he tells them. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”

“’Course,” says Nyma, flicking a flat stone in her hand.

Kolivan takes him through a gate, across a narrow bridge, to a path on top of a low cliff that overlooks what Kolivan calls Bower Lake. At the center of the body of water is a small island upon which squats a stone building with a peaked roof. Beyond the lake, a forest stretches on past the horizon.

“I will not lie to you,” Kolivan says. “Training will be difficult, and long, and will require patience you will learn to have. At the end of it, you won’t notice the skills you have learned because they will be ingrained into your very being. Are you ready for it?”

“Does it matter?” asks Keith, turning away from the view to look at the man. “I don’t know where else to learn how to kick a lord’s ass.”

Kolivan studies him for a long moment—long enough that Keith forgets and remembers he’s sightless—until turning his face to the lake. “Then we will begin immediately.”

* * *

The first thing Keith learns is that Kolivan is an unforgiving teacher. Physical drills are still a far off dream for Keith, whose body has months of muscle and fat to regain, but exercises of the mind, Kolivan points out, are just as imperative.

He sets Keith to learning his letters and mathematics as he lifts small sand weights, treating Keith’s early complaints with bone-chilling reminders that it would be just as easy to fail in his task by misreading a street sign. The only relief Keith gets is when Kolivan decides to break up his mathematical monotony with books of plants. Memorizing which can heal and which can cause grave illness is a lot closer to what Keith thinks is a relevant skillset, though he would still rather learn swordsmanship, or better yet, battle magic.

But Kolivan doesn’t breathe a word about magic or swords or battle, even until a week later when Keith has reached the end of not only his wits, but also bed rest.

“You’ve memorized the list of local plants?” asks Kolivan when he wakes Keith before dawn, as usual.

“Yes,” replies Keith.

“We will see.” Another thing Keith has learned is that Kolivan is the master of ominous speech—everything has to sound foreboding, or part of a prophecy, or imply the fate of the world. It must be tiring. “What are the uses of elfroot?”

“Medicinal,” says Keith. “A paste made from its leaves disinfects wounds and speeds healing. An infusion heals gut rot when drunk.”

“Correct. Find me a bundle of it.”

And with that, he sends Keith outside to join the wolfdog, who seemingly enjoys two things: sleeping on Keith’s lap, and waiting outside until she is allowed to sleep on Keith’s lap. She doesn’t seem put out at all that instead of waving her inside, Keith sets off walking down the narrow footpath. Perhaps make that three things she enjoys.

He stops at the camp gate, plants his hands on his hips and wonders where the hell he’s supposed to find elfroot. It would make sense for him to memorize its preferred habitat, but Keith hadn’t bothered, since how to prepare it seemed more important at the time. Regardless of his error, Keith feels more annoyed that Kolivan appears to take on a hands-free approach to education when it suits him.

“Nice view?” drawls a familiar voice. Keith turns to see Rolo and Nyma, carrying empty buckets in both hands.

“Kolivan’s sent me to fetch some herbs,” says Keith dully.

“And you can find it sitting on the horizon, can you?” quips Nyma.

“I don’t know where to start looking, actually. Has your mother ever told you that you’ll cut your mouth with a tongue that sharp?”

“Certainly,” she says easily, “though a lot less friendly-like.”

“What are you looking for?” asks Rolo. “I know a lot of the plants ‘round here. Useful ones, anyway.”

“Elfroot,” says Keith, feeling hopeful now. He could’ve swiped the book from the caravan, but somehow he figures Kolivan would not have liked that. _Learn to rely on yourself_ , or something like that.

Rolo looks thoughtful for a moment before nodding and jerking his head towards the lake. “We’re going down to dig up some potatoes. There should be some elfroot nearby, if you want to come along.”

Keith agrees gratefully and joins them as they walk across the bridge. They follow the path down to the water, passing beneath a handful of ancient stone pillars in various states of ruin. When they reach a cluster of hip-high plants with broad leaves, Rolo directs Keith further ahead. He finds himself in a thicket, scratched up by thorns and trying to remember whether elfroot needs a lot of sunlight to grow, or none at all. The wolfdog wisely stays outside the thicket, circling around the other side while Keith plows forward.

Minutes pass and Keith hasn’t found any elfroot and he’s beginning to wonder whether Rolo’s sent him on a wild goose chase. He begins considering revenge ideas, despite how admittedly un-herolike it is, when he stumbles free of the tangled growth into a clearing. Smooth rock dominates one side, tall and carved into a face like a man with an arched nose and rather impressive mustache. Keith wanders closer, one ear listening for the wolfdog as she bounds about the undergrowth delightedly, his eyes intent on the frankly incredible workmanship that probably went into this carving.

Or at least, that’s what he thinks until the carving _moves_ and unleashes a mighty yawn.

“What the everloving chickenshit!” Keith yelps, stumbling onto his backside.

“Oh!” says the rock...cliff... _thing_. “Are you not a little young to be bumbling across my glorious visage?”

“ _What?_ ” squeaks Keith.

“My—glorious—visage,” booms the face, as if Keith can’t hear him, or anyone else in the vicinity for that matter. Keith wonders whether Rolo and Nyma can hear, and if they’ll come running and save his sorry ass from this cursed cliff face thing.

“Right,” says Keith. “Uh. I was just looking for some...thing.”

“That so?” The face scrunches up thoughtfully, rock grinding together in a way that sets Keith’s teeth on edge. Slowly, the boy gets to his feet as the face says, “How delightful. I adore lookers and seekers, even though you are tiny.”

Keith scowls. “I’m not tiny!”

“Compared to me?” The face bursts out laughing, and continues long enough that Keith’s irritation peters out and he’s left feeling decidedly exhausted. “Ah, that was a good one… so good… Ehem. What is it you seek, young traveller?”

Keith squints at it before saying, “Uh… elfroot?”

“Ahaha! Fear not, for what you seek hides within these doors of mine!”

“Then…” Keith frowns at the face, only then noticing the seam that runs down the center of it. There are no handles. “Can I… uh… come in?”

“No!”

“What.”

“When you are in need of me, I shall open!”

 _What_ , Keith wants to repeat, but he doesn’t. He suspects the door doesn’t contain elfroot, nor did it actually hear what he said he was looking for, and that it’s bullshitting. “When the hell will I know that?”

“The whole point is that _you_ won’t, but _I_ will. So you’d better keep visiting me otherwise you’ll never see what’s beyond my face!”

Keith stares at the mustachioed door for a beat longer before saying, “I don’t expect there to be much.”

The door laughs heartily. “Adorably incorrect!”

“I just really need to find elfroot,” says Keith tiredly. “ _Please_.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you say so?” guffaws the door. “There’s a whole bunch right behind you!”

Keith turns and sees a swathe of the stuff, tall and thick-stalked with spade-like leaves. He swallows his ire, thanks the door only because he’s sure it’ll put up a fuss otherwise, and snaps several loose. The wolfdog, apparently oblivious to Keith’s exchange with the door, appears when he emerges at the lakeside. On the way back, Nyma and Rolo ask him how it went, but the only response he can come up with involves a multitude of exasperated swearing. Keith has never heard of a talking door, and he suspects should he mention it, they’ll think he’s lost it. They don’t needle him, though it’s clear by their expressions that they really want to. Even the dog seems on remarkably good behaviour up until Keith hands the elfroot over to Kolivan.

Kolivan eyes the bundle, turning it over in his hands to examine the broken ends of the stalks. “Next time,” he says, “cut the stalk, don’t break it.” He waits for Keith to force a nod before adding, “And choose those with mature blooms. Next, find me three blackberry buds.”

* * *

“I need a break,” Keith says three days later to an uncooperative Rolo, who is trying to learn how to juggle potatoes and very clearly not paying attention. The wolfdog sleeps at his feet. “Anything. As long as it’s not digging up tubers and being told they’re a day expired. Do you know how to use a weapon?”

At Keith’s hopeful stare, Rolo takes a ten second break in his juggling. “A sling, yeah.”

“That’s not a _weapon_.”

“Only someone who’s never used one proper would say that. With good aim, it’s a killer.”

“…Teach me?”

Rolo rolls his eyes but relents, so when Nyma finds them half an hour later, there are a number of exploded potatoes splattered against rocks and tree trunks. The wolfdog long ago learned that raw potatoes weren’t good eating.

“If you’re so bored, Kolivan probably has a quest or two for you,” Nyma teases.

Another half potato spins off into the bush, Keith biting back a groan when the sling flops. “Don’t even kid,” he sighs at Nyma. “Y’know he said he’d start teaching me to swim soon. I _know_ he’s going to throw me into the lake and leave me there.”

“Yeah, probably,” says Rolo.

“I need a break,” repeats Keith.

Nyma takes the sling and selects a round stone from the ground. Eyes forward, she spins the sling above her head and releases one end. The stone hits a tree trunk, taking a chunk out of the bark. She turns to smile smugly at the boys.

“Show-off,” mutters Keith.

Picking up another stone to do just that, Nyma says, “If you want a change of pace, my family goes into the market on the weekends. You could come along. Probably.”

Keith watches her nail the trunk an inch from her original chip. “Where? Bowerstone?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit,” mumbles Keith, because it never occurred to him to go _back_ to where it all began. Now that the opportunity presents itself though, he really wants to see the grungy gutters and battered squares of Oldtown again. “I don’t think Kolivan would be very… pleased.”

“Don’t tell him,” says Rolo.

“ _Or_ ,” interjects Nyma, “tell him you want a self-study day. Review, or something.”

Keith looks between the two of them, then down at the wolfdog, who would definitely have to stay behind. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll figure it out.”

* * *

After hyping himself up for half the day, hunting for a good bundle of elfroot and avoiding the demon door’s attempts at fashion advice, when Keith finally asks Kolivan, he’s given the weekend easily, though with the promise of a test on the Monday. It turns out that trying to explain to the wolfdog that she needs to stay in camp is the real test, and he ends up getting a few young children to distract her with her favourite game of fetch. Still, Keith is light on his feet when he meets Nyma at the bottom of the cliff path. Her family are all fair-haired and pale-skinned like her, and happy to have him along for the ride with assurance from Nyma that he’s not sticky-fingered. He gets to talking with her uncle, who takes his wife and children out travelling for interesting handmade trinkets and brings them back to sell at the Bowerstone market. The city itself comes into view in the midst of a particularly interesting tale about their caravan being attacked by balverines, nasty beasts with flat faces and sharp everything.

Keith doesn’t remember ever having seen the city from the outside. The walls are tall, guards positioned at regular intervals, the gate open and welcoming. Keith automatically shrinks back against a sack of something pointy; he feels like he may be caught at any moment. Perhaps Zarkon sent someone out to find his body, and put a price on his head when he couldn’t find it. Maybe he’s known the whole time where Keith is and has been lying in wait.

More probably he doesn’t realize the child he shot out his tower window is rolling in on the back of a caravan, a bunch of northerners cheerfully regaling him with tales of travels gone wrong or very, very right, depending on the listener and the teller.

Comforted by this thought, and the company around him, Keith eagerly looks out as they bring the horses to rest at the stables within the city walls. From there, they pull out a stall with wide wheels, which they fill with packed goods and roll across the bridge into the market square.

“Better fly,” says Nyma under her breath, “before my ma gets a hold of you for stall duty.”

Clapping a hand on her shoulder gratefully, Keith takes a hike. Never having been in the more well off section of the city, Keith finds his gaze clinging to shop windows and comfortably dressed folk as though he’s in an entirely different country. The only reason he knows where Oldtown sits is because he can see it in the west—shabby and domineering despite its waste, far off in the distance where nobody would bother to look, not when the ocean and Fairfax castle lie to the east.

Keith’s mouth goes dry at the sight of the grand mansion, but he has no business there—not yet. He strides down the street, the tall and narrow shops effectively blocking the castle from view. Someone is selling roasted nuts at an intersection. The smell is tempting in Keith’s nose, but he pats his belly soothingly and turns down the next road. Foot traffic is thinner here, less shops and more houses. They’re much straighter than the sagging buildings in Oldtown, but they have the same bare wood and stone style that Keith attributes to Bowerstone as a whole.

He thinks he’s headed in the right direction when he realizes he isn’t walking alone. He stops, and the boy beside him stops as well. Keith continues, the boy does the same. Keith stops.

The boy plants his hands on his hips and has the gall to look expectant. “Well?”

“Well _what?_ ” snaps Keith, utterly mystified and more than a little perturbed.

“I’ve been trying to get your attention for _ages_ and you’ve been ignoring me!”

Keith wonders whether it’s his true destiny to be annoyed by odd characters for the rest of his life. “I don’t know you.”

The boy cocks his head and arches a thin eyebrow. “Clearly.”

“Then why would I stop.”

“I just said I’ve been trying to get your att—”

“ _Why_.”

The boy lets out a long, drawn out sigh, and shifts his arms to fold across his chest. He can’t be any older than Keith himself, an inch shorter but fiesty dark blue eyes daring him to comment on it.

“You’re not from around here,” declares the boy.

“ _Obviously_ ,” says Keith, channeling as much Nyma as he can into his voice.

The boy lets out _another_ sigh, louder this time. He makes to grab Keith’s arm, who steps away with a curled lip.

“Folk _know_ you’re not from around here,” says the boy exasperatedly, empty hand stuck in the air between them. “You’re noticeable.”

Keith stares at him incredulously, then looks down at his clothes. Layers upon layers—fashion of the caravan folk, not the threadbare and split seams of the homeless Oldtown kids.

“Huh,” he says, and lets the stranger lead him to the minute gap between two houses.

“Nobody trusts an outsider where there aren’t no shops to bring them in,” explains the boy.

The assumption that he doesn’t know what he’s doing irks Keith. “I’m from Oldtown.”

“Not with that get up,” says the boy, looking Keith up and down pointedly.

“I am! Or… I was.”

“Mama told me tenses are important,” says the boy dryly.

Instead of asking what _tenses_ are, Keith scoffs. “Whatever.”

“‘Sides, there’s nothing up there.”

Keith rounds on him angrily, but no words come. It’s true, even if Keith doesn’t like the rib on what used to be his home. All Oldtown has to offer are a few familiar faces that he doesn’t even know the names of, and bad memories and even worse blood. It’d probably be better if he didn’t go back. Kolivan would ask questions if he returned bruised up from fighting the other gutter rats.

The boy tips his head at Keith. “If you’d rather, I could show you where the real fun is.”

“Yeah right,” scoffs Keith.

“Seriously! There’s a lot here, and I haven’t got anyone to really explore it with…” The boy trails off, frowning at nothing, causing Keith to frown along with him, which is a strange reaction but he isn’t given any time to think about it. The boy is suddenly grinning at him in a way that means mischief. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here, and you look like a kid that knows how to get things done. I’m Lance.”

He sticks out a hand. Swept up in his pace without meaning to, Keith automatically clasps his hand and blurts, “Keith.”

“Great to meet you, Keith,” beams Lance.

Keith doesn’t know quite yet if he agrees.

* * *

* * *

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did you know the chapter count went up did you also know that it'll probably go up again because i didnt realize how much i would want to write
> 
>  
> 
> [me tumblr](http://bitterbeetle.tumblr.com)


	3. tales and mischief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith makes a friend in Bowerstone, while his training with Kolivan progresses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you believe this and the last chapter were supposed to go together......i can't

Stretching above them are the tall gates of the Bowerstone Cemetery, wide open and unwelcoming. Keith looks at the swirling iron design, the nasty looking spikes crowning the top, and the sly smile of Lance beside him. He can’t help but think how suspicious they look as a pair: a scrawny local boy with neatly trimmed hair and patchless clothes, accompanied by a caravan kid with a permanently windblown look and too many layers, still gaudy despite how faded they are. It’s obvious they’re up to no good.

“You’re joking,” says Keith.

“You _scared?_ ” Lance snickers and takes several bold steps through the gate. Keith’s own feet jolt as if they’ve got hooks attached, leading straight to Lance.

As if summoned by the stench of mischief, a guard appears before them, an eyebrow cocked and arms folded over a too-broad chest. A flash of panic sets Keith’s teeth on edge. Only the fact that Lance stands with him keeps him from running into the narrow alleys of the city.

“No playing among the deceased,” says the guard sternly.

“We’re not playing!” Lance fibs at once. “We’re visiting relatives.”

The guard raises his other brow. “With no flowers?”

“We—we were planning on using some of them daisies,” says Lance, pointing eagerly at a cluster of white flowers beside the path. “Right, Keith?”

Frozen for a beat, Keith’s jerky nod does nothing to convince the guard their trespassing is anything but criminal. He doesn’t miss the way the guard’s gaze takes in Keith’s clothing style, or the smudges of dirt across his face that feel permanent.

“Run along, kids,” he says with an ushering gesture of his hands. “Go play where you won’t disturb the dearly departed.”

“I’m serious!” protests Lance even as they back up through the gates. The guard parks himself beneath the iron arch and stares at them pointedly. Grumbling, Lance nudges Keith with an elbow and says, “C’mon.”

Keith is relieved to escape the gaze of the guard, and he’s especially thankful that it’s not one he’s ever seen before. As soon as they’re unseen, however, Lance scoffs.

“There are other ways inside,” he says. “Let’s go!”

“Are you sure you’ve never been here before?” asks Keith suspiciously.

“I haven’t!”

“Why not?”

“‘Cause.”

“‘Cause why?”

Lance scowls. “Just ‘cause!”

But Keith sees an opening and digs in. “ _You’re_ scared to go in alone, huh?”

“No!” squawks Lance indignantly. “I’m just— it’d be a waste, is all, to experience the adventure by myself.” He sniffs haughtily, drawing himself up as tall as he can manage. “Of course, if _you’re_ scared, we can go pick flowers off windowsills instead.”

Despite catching the dare, Keith can’t let it slide. He narrows his eyes at the challenge in Lance’s voice, then mimics him and draws himself up, effectively topping Lance by another solid inch.

“ _If_ you can find another way in,” says Keith.

Which is how they end up scaling a house, leaping from the balcony to the tree growing on the other side of the stone and iron wall. Keith doesn’t admit that it gives him a thrill, but he can feel Lance’s giddy laughter mirrored in his belly.

It becomes clear to Keith that while Lance hasn’t gone exploring inside the cemetery, he does know how to make an adventure. They bound along the well kept paths, treating visitors as villains to avoid—except for when they do spot the guard from earlier, and Keith’s heart is in his throat as they wait for him to pass, the two children flat to the ground beneath a prickly blackberry bush.

At some point Lance acquires a stick and twirls it around like a staff, smacking it off the ground, trees, and Keith, who tries to snatch it from him with a scowl.

“Oops!” Lance laughs as Keith lunges for it unsuccessfully. “Gotta be quicker than that!”

He runs on ahead, but Keith is faster, and suddenly they’re racing down the path at breakneck speed, stick forgotten. Heaving for breath, the two boys stop at the bottom of a shallow slope. At the top is a collection of small buildings.

“Houses?” pants Keith.

Lance makes an unintelligible wheezing sound. Keith waits until he’s had his fill of air before asking again.

“Wha— Houses? In here?” Lance straightens up and wipes his brow with a dirt-smudged sleeve. “Oh! No, those are tombs.”

“A what?”

“Y’know, rooms for the important dead.”

Keith follows Lance’s lead up the grassy slope. “You mean the rich dead.”

“Same difference,” says Lance dismissively.

“Just ‘cause someone’s got gems and gold doesn’t mean they’re _important_ ,” retorts Keith.

Lance opens his mouth to argue, but pauses and wrinkles his nose in thought. They’ve reached the tombs; some are clustered together and small, while others are set apart with their own fences and fancy gates. Keith looks at them with disgust, wondering just how many kids could eat for the price of a dead man’s bed.

“I see your point,” says Lance, “but I think they’re rich _because_ they’re important.” Keith shoots him a look that he raises his nose at. “What? It’s true! Think about it: if Lord Fairfax up and died, the city would explode!”

For one fleeting moment, Keith wants to punch Lance in the face. In spite of such a desire passing, he still feels his stubby nails digging into his palms, drawing his attention to the pain and not the flash of anger.

He exhales long and slow through his nose. “If Za— if Lord Fairfax died,” he grinds out, doing his best not to toss the name with too much scorn, “he’d be replaced by some other puffed up pigeon. The city would stay the same.”

“You’re kidding,” says Lance incredulously. “Lord Fairfax is incredible! They taught us all about him in school. Before he took control of the city, the economy was rubbish and the crime rate was sky high. People were being mugged—in broad daylight, in front of their homes. Can you imagine? But he opened up new trade, built up the docks for ships, and made so many new jobs—”

Lance’s eyes are alight with an excitement rivalled only by the promise of an adventure; Keith feels nauseous. He wonders about the Zarkon that Lance sees, clean and golden, but bile threatens to scald its way up his throat. He swallows, repeatedly, until the discomfort wavers.

“Yeah, well, I never went to school,” Keith eventually manages, turning to walk away.

“ _Really?_ ” Lance trots after him, his tirade interrupted and replaced. “How come? I know there are schools in Oldtown, but mama says the kids don’t bother going and that’s why they all end up—”

“ _Shut up!”_ snaps Keith, rounding angrily on a stunned Lance. “You _don’t_ know. When have you ever been to Oldtown? You—not your parents or your schoolteachers or whatever. Have _you_ ever been? No? Then shut up.”

He doesn’t wait for a response, whipping back around and striding off between two sickeningly fancy tombs. The urge to break them seizes Keith quite viciously—take their swirling gates and bend them, shatter stone doors, rip up the grass. No amount of violence might satisfy him.

Keith doesn’t know how long he stalks the cemetery, but eventually he stops to sit in the shadows cast by a cluster of forgotten tombs, small and ramshackle, with some doors broken by thieves or time. Knees drawn up, Keith does what he’s been avoiding for days—he thinks of Shiro.

Hot tears threaten to spill over almost immediately and he hastily rubs them away. In the caravan, only when his lessons ended and Nyma and Rolo weren’t around to play did Keith feel such thoughts come creeping back. Shiro waking him up with a grin, Shiro giving him his scarf, now safely tucked away beneath Keith’s bed. Shiro looking wistfully at that distant castle. Shiro’s back, his body a shield.

What could Keith, a streetrat with a sharp tongue, ever do against a fully grown man overcome with a mania Keith could never understand? What could he have done differently?

He knows regret is a poison, like taking a shortcut and losing his dinner for the next two days, but this isn’t a bunch of hungry kids jumping another hungry kid. This is his brother, gone, and himself, alone.

Keith buries his face in his knees and breathes steadily, but the tears come anyway.

Lance finds him like this; Keith hears him stop in the grass, feet shuffling awkwardly. It takes a ridiculous amount of willpower not to sniff, but Keith manages it only to wipe snot on an already filthy sleeve.

Lance clears his throat and Keith ignores him.

“I found Lady Fairfax’s tomb,” says Lance, obviously trying and failing to sound casual. “Do you want to see it?”

Keith grits his teeth so hard he thinks he might break another.

Lance waits a minute before saying, “Rumour has it they’re empty anyway.” He’s met with more silence. Lance clears his throat again. “Y’know. I reckon there’s probably a lot of adventures to be had in Oldtown… if you wanted to show me.”

Keith scowls into his knees, but when he lifts his head, his expression is blank. “You wouldn’t like it,” he manages, though his voice is nasally from a stuffy nose.

“Maybe,” Lance says with an awkward kick at a tuft of grass, “but I’d kind of like to see for myself.”

Silence for another moment, but this time because Keith is scrutinizing Lance, judging for himself whether the boy is being serious. Eventually he turns away to give his sore face one last wipe before rising to his feet.

“Next time, then,” he says, and Lance looks relieved.

* * *

The sun is on its way down when Keith realizes he’d better find Nyma. After loitering about the cemetery for a while longer, Lance took Keith out to explore the much less threatening alleyways of his neighbourhood. The houses are familiar in their wooden beams to those of Oldtown, but they aren’t sagging and there’s no build up of trash between them. Keith wonders if this is what Oldtown used to look like, before it became _old_.

“You should come back to my house!” suggests Lance as they walk, trying not to look too eager, and once again failing. “Mama wouldn’t mind making a bit more dinner. You can meet my older sisters, even though they’re a pain. And my pa—”

“I really need to get back,” says Keith, overwhelmed. “I don’t want Nyma to leave without me.”

Lance’s face falls. “Oh, alright. Wait—leave? Where?”

“Bower Lake,” says Keith dryly, plucking at his grubby clothes. Kolivan won’t be impressed. Despite being blind, he always knows when Keith ends up unnecessarily filthy.

“Oh, the caravan.” Lance slows to a stop and Keith does the same. “Well. This is my place.”

It’s a tall, narrow townhouse, just like the rest. The windows on the top floor are open. Keith can hear people inside, though it might be from the neighbouring house with its balcony doors open wide for a breeze.

“When’s next time?”

“Huh?”

“Next time,” repeats Lance impatiently. “You’re coming back, right?”

“Oh, yeah, next Saturday,” says Keith at once, not even thinking about asking Nyma’s family if he can tag along again.

Especially not when Lance breaks out into a beaming smile. “Great. Come get me, if you can remember how to get here.”

Keith scoffs. “I’ll be able to just fine.”

“See you next week!” says Lance with a laugh, and then he turns and bounces up to the front door.

As soon as it opens, warm light envelopes Lance from inside, and then with one last grin over his shoulder, he’s gone. The voices grow louder. Keith doesn’t linger—the shadows are getting longer and he _needs_ to be on Nyma’s family’s good side now. He only manages to get lost once on his way back to the main square, and when he arrives he’s just in time to help them close up the stall and haul it back across the bridge.

“Have any fun?” asks Nyma around a yawn as they roll back along the road to Bower Lake.

Keith watches the city vanish behind a thick wall of trees. “Yeah,” he says. “A little.”

* * *

Half a week later sees Keith dropping a bundle of cleanly cut elfroot into Kolivan’s hand, and a sword being pressed into Keith’s. For a long moment he just stares at the blade, sheathless and tarnished, with no edge to cut. A fierce excitement takes hold of him. It’s surprisingly heavy, bending his wrist at an awkward angle when he tires of holding it aloft, but it’s a sword, a real sword, and one day he might even use it to—

Kolivan’s voice cuts through his frenetic thoughts, “You will earn the strength to wield it as an extension of yourself. For now, I will teach you the basics.”

Keith knows this means repeating the same sets of movements for the next unspecified number of days, but he also knows what Kolivan doesn’t won’t hurt him. When his lessons end for the day, Keith scampers off with sword and wolfdog in tow, to the creek where Rolo practices his slingshot. There, he wields the blade like a boy possessed, swinging it about and getting it stuck in tree trunks.

Rolo and Nyma find him like that, dealing deadly blows to invisible enemies while the wolfdog occupies a patch of sunlight a safe distance away.

“I can’t believe someone really trusted you with something bigger and sharper than a spoon,” drawls Rolo.

Keith lunges and holds the pose, feeling sweat run a line down his spine. Suddenly his wrist bends and the sword drops to the ground. With a curse, Keith stoops to pick it up again, but his knees give out from exhaustion.

“Take it easy,” says Nyma as he sprawls out with a huff. “What’re you in such a rush for, huh?”

“I don’t like feeling weak,” mutters Keith instead of the truth: there’s a lord waiting for a sword through the belly, courtesy of Keith, and he can’t wait.

“Maybe you feel weak ‘cause you practice till you drop.”

Instead of answering, Keith slaps his palms to the ground and starts twisting his body like Kolivan had instructed him to do post-workout. Neither she nor Rolo try to stop him from pushing himself further than he should.

* * *

Nyma and her family find no problem letting Keith tag along with them the next weekend. The bumpy journey is hell on Keith’s sore muscles, but he keeps his mouth clamped over complaints. Once across the bridge, Keith helps the family set up shop, and then he slips away to find Lance’s neighbourhood.

It’s easy enough to retrace his steps, although now he’s aware of how conspicuous he looks. More than one person frowns as Keith trots past. He ducks his head and moves faster, trying to find the balance between walking with purpose, but not mischief. He finds Lance crouched outside his house, scratching shapes into the ground with a small rock. When he notices Keith, he immediately perks up.

“You didn’t get lost!”

“‘Course I didn’t,” sniffs Keith. “Easy. Were you waiting?”

Lance shrugs. “I didn’t know how early you’d get here—”

They’re interrupted by a hissing voice from above. “Lance! _Lance!_ ”

Startled, Keith looks up to the balcony of the neighbouring house. It takes him a moment to realize there’s a young girl crouched there, her face shoved between the bars of the railing.

“Your face is gonna get stuck, Katie,” snickers Lance.

“S’not,” she says, removing her head with some effort. “Who’s that?”

“This is Keith.”

Katie narrows her eyes at Keith, clearly judging him. Her nose wrinkles with obvious disdain. “What’s he _wearing?_ ”

“Clothes,” says Lance, catching Keith’s eye and trying not to laugh.

“They’re dumb.”

An ugly snort rips itself free from Lance’s nose. Keith scowls up at the girl, who can’t be more than six years old.

“That’s not how you speak to strangers,” he says, echoing his brother’s admonishments that he’d ignored on more than one occasion.

Katie stands up, hefting her elbows over the rail in order to glare down at him. “You gonna play with Lance?”

“Yeah, he is,” says Lance before Keith can answer, face red from mirth. “We’re going on an adventure!”

“I wanna go!”

“You’re too young!”

“No I’m not!”

“Are too.”

“No!”

Keith feels a tug on his sleeve and looks down to see Lance’s fingers bunched in the fabric of his shirt.

“Some other time,” says Lance, his other hand already raising in an exuberant wave. “Bye Katie!”

To the sounds of Katie’s indignant protests, Lance makes a break for it, pulling Keith along with him. He doesn’t let go until they’re a block away, and even then it’s just to reposition his grip to Keith’s hand as they run. Keith doesn’t complain. His stomach is filling with an excitement he can’t remember ever experiencing. He’s looking forward to whatever adventure Lance will come up with today, and he hopes that next weekend—for surely Lance will invite him back—will be just as fun, and the one after that.

Naturally, Lance delivers.

“Isn’t this a cellar?” asks Keith, eyeing the door set in the ground. A cluster of debris serves as a barrier between the main street and the alleyway in which they stand.

“Yep.”

“And…?”

Lance rolls his eyes. “There’s stuff _inside_. C’mon, anything interesting is behind something locked.”

Keith would agree, but Shiro had made it a point not to nurture any sort of lawbreaking, and besides filching some food, Keith kept to his word. He didn’t have much time to go snooping around locked places, not like Lance, who stoops to grab hold of the fat lock keeping them from entering.

“I had a go at it the other day,” says Lance as he gives the lock a yank, “so it should open. I think.”

“You picked the lock?” asks Keith incredulously.

Lance presses a finger to his mouth urgently. “Shush! And yes. Kind of. Maybe.”

“I didn’t know a kid like you could do that,” Keith says with something he fervently hopes Lance won’t recognize as respect.

Unfortunately, he does, and looks torn between smugness and guilt. “The lock was already pretty broken, I just… helped it along?”

“Does your ma know?”

“My ma—?!” Lance flinches and ducks, dragging Keith down with him. A second later, a cluster of people with arms weighed down by their shopping amble past. Once they’re out of sight, Lance releases Keith’s arm and frowns at him. “Of course my ma doesn’t know. Don’t you go blabbing to her either!”

“I wouldn’t!”

“Better not!” Lance stares at him, as if making sure Keith is telling the truth, before turning back to the door. He gives the lock another sharp pull; with a metallic clatter it pops free. Beaming, Lance beckons Keith to help him pull the door open.

The cellar is musty, with shelves full of preserved foods near the entrance, and old furniture stacked upon each other in the back. Overall, it’s fairly small, though Keith doesn’t have much to compare it to. He simply follows Lance as he clambers between stacked chairs and rolls of moth-eaten cloth. With their only light being that which drops in through the open door, Keith can’t see much but the movement of Lance ahead, and the black corners of the tables that jab into his side. Muttering under his breath, he doesn’t notice Lance has stopped until it’s too late.

“Ouch!” gripes Lance. “Watch where you’re walking!”

“I wish I could,” hisses Keith.

“I’ve got something—”

“What is it?”

“I can’t see. Back up!”

“Ugh.”

They shuffle backwards until there’s enough weak light to see by. In Lance’s hands is a small stack of books, their original colour obscured by a thick layer of grime and dust. Lance makes a face at the mess, but Keith has no qualms taking the top book and using his sleeve to clean off most of the filth.

“Ooh!” says Lance in Keith’s ear, peering over his shoulder. “I know this book!”

Keith cocks an eyebrow. “What is it?”

The cover is unfamiliar, even though the title is legible now: _Legends of Albion._ There’s a design beneath the letters that Keith takes another moment to scrub. As soon as he draws away his wrist, however, he freezes.

There’s a circle, its center plain, but the outer edge decorated in lettering Keith doesn’t know. It’s not carved in stone, nor is it glowing, but Keith knows it; he’ll never forget. The circle adorning the book cover in his hands is the same as the one in Zarkon’s tower.

He nearly drops it, but Lance’s hand is already there taking the book from him. “Mama used to read me these stories. Did you never—? Wait, can you read?”

That snaps Keith back to the present. He scowls. “Of course I can read! _Legends of Albion_. I’ve never heard of ‘em.”

“ _Really?_ There’s all sorts of fun stories about heroes and villains, saving the world, y’know?”

“Heroes?”

“Yeah! My favourite is the one about the Hero of Oakvale. Lemme see…” Lance trails off, flipping through the book until he finds the chapter he’s looking for. His face falls when he sees the pages are water damaged and half the paragraphs stained by something or other. “Well. Anyway. It’s about this kid who’s descended from the rulers of the Old Kingdom. His journey starts when his little brother is kidnapped by bandits, and his village is burned to the ground. Another hero picks him up and trains him in all sorts of different weapons and he goes to avenge the death of his father and neighbours. It’s _really_ good.”

Keith gazes at the ruined pages of the book without really seeing them. “What happens?”

“Turns out his brother is still alive, working as a seer for a bunch of bandits that saved him from those that burned the village. Except he got blinded from being tortured, and he has all these cool dreams and stuff, and gives a prophecy to the Hero of Oakvale. There’s a whole bit where the hero goes to find his ma, and he’s got a rival that is sort of his lover but they never do clear that up. Then he has to fight this guy with a mask that’s possessed him, and make a choice whether he wears the mask and gets unlimited power, or destroys it.”

“So… what does he pick?”

“Doesn’t say.” Lance shrugs and snaps the book shut. “Some versions have endings but my pa always gave us the open end. He also refused to tell us the version where people actually die, so one time I asked him if Kolivan was still alive and my pa said the people in legends never die.”

Keith blinks at him rapidly. “Wait, what?”

“My pa said people in legends don’t actually die.”

“No, I mean, you said Kolivan?” Keith’s heart begins to pound as Lance tilts his head in honest confusion.

“Yeah, that’s the name of the little brother.”

“And—” He feels lightheaded, pins and needles washing up his spine, “—you said this Kolivan was blind?”

“And could tell the future or something, yeah. Are you okay?”

“Fine,” says Keith faintly. “Um. Did the Hero of Oakvale use, uh, magic? Or something?”

Lance’s eyes light up. “How could I forget!” He dumps the books in his grasp upon a filthy stool in order to gesticulate enthusiastically. “He could summon glowing blades, or fire, or _lightning_ , and sometimes he could even summon the _dead_ for a little while!”

That certainly wasn’t what Keith was expecting when Kolivan said he had magic. Keith subtly leans against the furniture behind him, fingers twitching at the thought of conjuring up an army of skeletons. The glowing blades sound cool, though.

“You sure you’re okay?” Lance is peering at him through the poor light, hands frozen midgesture.

Keith gives himself a mental shake and forces himself to stand on his own. “Yeah. Tell me more stories?”

“Sure!” Lance beams. “So there was a hero named Whisper…”

* * *

Wood deflects off wood with a jarring sensation up Keith’s arms. He grimaces and repositions himself, left foot forward and a shoulder width apart from his right. The wooden sword in his hand, heavy with lead, jolts forward as he lunges to strike at the gnarled corpse of the tree before him. It kind of looks like a person, in a twisted way, which is probably why Kolivan chose it as a dummy of sorts.

“Again,” says the blind man from the sidelines. As always, the wolfdog is sprawled out in the sun, completely at ease. “Strike left, right, above, below. Again. Again. Switch hands. Again.”

Sweat glues Keith’s clothes to him and stings in his eyes, but he doesn’t relent. He matches Kolivan’s pace, thwacking the tree even as his arms burn from the effort. Only when his breath is coming in ragged gasps and he staggers on his feet does Kolivan finally call for a break. At his feet is a bucket of clear water and a cup which he offers Keith. The wolfdog comes dawdling over for a pat, but Keith only has the strength to rest his hand on her head.

The repetitive motions have long since chafed Keith’s nerves, but he’s only allowed to actually hit stuff with the wooden sword, the blunt metal one for slicing through the air and only that. Kolivan doesn’t need to know about Keith’s continued practice under his wolfdog’s lazy gaze.

“How do you feel?” asks Kolivan.

Keith knows he’s not asking about his emotions. “My wrist isn’t sore anymore. My strikes with my left hand over my right aren’t as strong. I don’t have to think about where I put my feet anymore.”

Kolivan nods, as close to a _good_ as Keith will ever get. “Then we will move forward.”

“Wha— _really?_ ”

“Yes, unless you believe you need more time—”

“No!” Keith blurts out. “No, I-I’m ready.”

Kolivan moves aside part of his robe to pull another wooden sword from its depths. He spins it in his palm, curling both hands around the hilt. Keith just looks at him, puzzled, until one pale brow quirks up.

“Oh, uh,” begins Keith awkwardly, “I didn’t think… Are you? Going to be my sparring partner?”

“Yes.”

“ _Oh_. I see—I mean, okay. Uh… Are you—?”

Keith breaks off with a yelp as Kolivan surges forward, sword smacking him on the crown of his head.

“When I deem you competent,” says Kolivan calmly, “I will find you another partner. For now, I will do.”

Admittedly, Keith suspects he’s underestimated the man, not only based on his lack of sight but also for the fact he hadn’t seen Kolivan use any sort of weaponry. He supposes now that was foolish on his part—nobody so mysterious as he could possibly have continued living on the road without some sort of defence. Especially one that might be hundreds of years old.

They begin with the same pattern of strikes Keith had been practicing for the greater part of the day. For every blow, Kolivan matches with a parry, and—if Keith isn’t quick enough—a counterattack. Soon Keith has a collection of bruises across his knuckles, a lump on his head, and the callouses he’d worked so hard for worn thin.

“Anyone will be waiting for an opening,” says Kolivan as he raps Keith across the hand and causing him to drop his sword. “Don’t give them any.”

As Keith bends to scoop up his practice weapon, he grunts half-jokingly, “What kind of bad people are we talking about here?”

He slides back into his stance, wishing for a break but not daring to ask, while Kolivan looks at him with something as close to confusion as the man can get. “Bad people,” he repeats.

“Yeah. Bad people looking for an opening.” Keith gestures with the tip of his sword, regretting it when his wrist goes limp under the strain. “You’re—ow—playing the villain right now.”

Kolivan raises silver brows. “Everyone is _good_ from where they stand alone, but rest assured—they are, in all likelihood, the villain of another’s story. Whoever opposes your goals is your enemy. Sword up.”

Keith doesn’t think that sounds quite right; there were plenty of times he wanted something Shiro didn’t and vice versa, but never did he consider his brother a villain for it. An enemy is like Zarkon, whose actions are so evil that Keith can’t imagine the man thinks himself good. As Kolivan indicates for Keith to strike, he guesses it’ll just be another thing he’ll grow to understand, like his grip on the sword that Kolivan keeps correcting.

* * *

Spring melts into summer as Keith persists under Kolivan’s tutelage. He spends his mornings away from the worst of the heat, ingraining parries and strikes into his muscle memory; afternoons are devoted to learning his plants, basic cooking and first aid. With the change in weather and the difficulty of Kolivan’s lessons, Keith stops practicing swordwork on his own and instead finds relaxation in his friends’ company, trying to skip stones with a sling and whittling brittle spoons.

But every weekend, Keith looks forward to the bumpy ride into Bowerstone the most. Navigating the path to Lance’s house has become second nature, and now some of the locals recognize him enough to greet him on his way past. Even Katie, peering down at him from the balcony, has stopped glaring at him.

“I want to come too!” she complains as Lance joins Keith outside.

“No way,” says Lance cheerfully. “See you later, Pidge!”

“Don’t call me that!” she yells as the two boys bound out of sight.

“What’s a pidge?” asks Keith when they’re a block away.

Lance just starts laughing at the memory, until he’s got enough breath in him to tell the story of how Katie tried to sneak out once, but her brother Matt had caught her perched on the railing like a pigeon.

“I’m never going to let her live it down,” says Lance fondly.

The two of them inevitably get into all sorts of trouble, getting caught in places they shouldn’t be, being recognized by the afternoon cemetery guard shift. Keith is having so much fun he can’t even bring himself to be concerned with the fact the broad-chested guard has started treating him with exasperated familiarity. Sometimes he’ll even escort them straight to Lance’s home, where his mother will feed them fresh bread and cheese. At first, Keith couldn’t eat slowly, shovelling it into his mouth with the faint feeling it’ll be stolen from his hands before he can really enjoy it. It takes some weeks, and the patience of Lance’s mother, until Keith learns to chew his mouthfuls proper.

It’s midsummer when Lance brings up the fact they haven’t yet visited Oldtown.

“You don’t want to show me around?” Lance pouts, but it’s ineffective.

“Don’t tell me you’ve run out of adventures,” says Keith.

“What? _Me?_ Run out of adventures? Nonsense! I just want to see _your_ adventures. Unless it’s too _dangerous_.”

The way he says it is a taunt, but it’s true. For the most part, Oldtown is harmless, with more good people than bad—they just happen to have more patches in their clothes than those in Lance’s neighbourhood. The problem lies in the few that haunt the dark corners, waiting for someone to slip up. Keith looks up at the sky, the sun high and blinding.

“It’s fine,” Keith says, “but we’ll go in the back way.”

Lance tilts his head. “What’s the back way?”

“Oh, trust me. You’ll like it.”

* * *

Lance does, in fact, enjoy scaling a stone wall just so they can avoid taking the stairs into one of the main squares. The crumbling grout provides ample hand- and footholds. As soon as their feet touch the broken cobbles of Oldtown proper, Keith leads Lance into the narrow winding alleys, ducking under building scraps and jumping over puddles and unsuspecting sleepers. Familiarity floods Keith, as though he never left in the first place. He sees the old woman that used to give him heels of old bread—he hasn’t felt hungry enough to beg for months now—and the house he’d stand next to for warmth.

Behind him, Lance yelps. Keith skids to a halt and whips around in time for Lance to barrel right into him. They go down in a tumble in the middle of the walkway.

“ _Lance_ ,” groans Keith, sprawled out on his back with the other boy’s hip gouging into his stomach.

“I saw a rat,” says Lance sheepishly, peeking over his shoulder. Keith fixes him with his most unimpressed look. “It was huge, okay! Bigger than a cat.”

“Whatever, just get off me.”

He gives Lance a shove, and he’s thanked with an elbow to the ribs. They scuffle briefly before managing to get back on their feet, at which time Keith realizes more than a few pairs of eyes are watching them. Embarrassed, Keith grabs Lance by the elbow and leads him past a pair of amused men that smell like fish.

“Where did you live?” asks Lance curiously as they wander.

“Oh, it’s…” Keith waves a hand vaguely, “...gone.”

“You got evicted?”

“Evic-what?”

“My pa says it’s when people get kicked out of their houses. That’s why you’re living with the caravan, right?”

It occurs to Keith just how much about himself Lance doesn’t know—and he wants to keep it that way. Thankfully, it’s easy enough to spin a story, especially one Lance himself provided.

“Something like that,” says Keith nonchalantly. “You wanna bust into the shoe factory?”

Lance’s eyes light up. “Where’s _that?_ ”

Grinning, Keith leads him to the other side of Oldtown, to the warehouse that holds crates upon crates of cheaply made items to be sold elsewhere. It’s not close enough to the industrial district—and the old orphanage—that Keith might feel uncomfortable. The two boys slip around the side of the two story building, where a rickety old stair leads to an exit. The door itself is easy enough to open, Lance’s apparent skill with locks notwithstanding, and soon they’re scurrying around inside. The weekend shift is in full swing, providing the boys with villains to duck and avoid. No doubt someone is going to think the place is haunted.

They end up being seen by a teen wearing a leather smock. The three stare at each other for a tense moment before Keith and Lance grab at each other and run. Behind them, the teen shouts, and footsteps thunder up the stairs, but the two boys find the exit first. Keith zigzags down the alleys, Lance hot on his heels.

As they fly around a corner, they run straight into another person turning from the opposite direction. Keith gets a face full of the stench of seaweed and ale before staggering back. Somewhere behind him, he hears Lance stumble to the ground with a groan.

“What’re ya in a rush for lads?” The woman looms over them with a grin that spells trouble. Keith takes a step back, an arm going out in front of Lance once he’s on his feet. As Keith watches, something in the woman’s expression changes. “Ooh, I know _you_.”

And in that same moment, Keith recognizes her as well. It's been some time ago, but the woman hasn’t changed in the slightest. Her robes, too thin for the winter, still hang over her gangly frame. This time however, Keith notices a knife strapped to her leg.

“You gave me _quite_ a bit o’ trouble,” she says, shifting her weight, “an’ I see now you don’ have that filthy mutt with you.”

From behind Keith, Lance’s voice is a small thing. “Uh, Keith? Do you know her?”

“In a way,” says Keith. “ _Run!_ ”

He wheels around, but the woman strikes like a snake. In an instant, she has a handful of Keith’s hair and yanks him towards her. Keith flings an elbow out behind him wildly. It connects with something solid, and she grunts, but her grip doesn’t loosen.

“Keith!” Lance is staring at him, frozen in the middle of the alley. Keith tries to tell him to move on, but the woman gives his head a shake and the words choke off. Even with his eyes watering from his stinging scalp, Keith sees Lance’s expression transition into one of determination. “Let him go!”

“Not likely, kid,” hisses the woman. “He owes me.”

“I owe you nothing!” spits Keith, going for another elbow jab. It misses, but the heel he brings down on her foot doesn’t.

Her grip slides to the ends of his hair. With a yank, Keith frees himself and tumbles to the ground. He scrambles towards Lance, who is reaching for something between the cobbles, just as the woman lunges for him again. She snags his ankle and pulls, but a blind kick wards her off.

“Leave us alone,” says Lance before winding his arm back and snapping it forward.

The woman snaps out a curse. “How dare you—”

“I said leave us _alone!_ ” shouts Lance.

Keith turns onto his back in time to see the second stone nail the woman right in the eye. She jerks backwards, face twisting in pain, a hand coming up to her injured eye. A third stone ricochets off her forehead, leaving a cut above her eyebrow that begins to bead red. Keith lurches to his feet and practically throws himself at Lance, hooking their arms together and hauling him towards the other end of the alley. Lance obediently drops the rest of his projectiles and focuses on running as the woman snarls curses at their backs.

They don’t stop until they can’t possibly run any further, and even then Keith still feels like she’ll appear around a corner with nails like snake fangs. Seeming to sense this, Lance takes the lead next, acting as though he knows the streets of Oldtown.

They end up in one of the sea-facing courtyards; at its center is a gnarled tree, twisting down and around itself instead of upright like any of the self-respecting trees by Bower Lake. Lance walks up to it first, reaching up to a low hanging branch and pulling himself up. Once he’s seated on it, he looks down at Keith and grins.

“What are you waiting for?”

After a moment to calm his breathing, Keith follows Lance’s lead. They climb as high as they can before the branches threaten to bend under their weight. With the foliage all around them, Keith finally feels safe. He sighs.

“So,” says Lance nonchalantly. “Oldtown’s a neat place.”

Keith shoots him a flat look. There’s a beat of silence, and then they both burst out laughing, bowing over branches and grabbing onto each other to keep from falling. Keith is breathless all over again, but this time he doesn’t mind it so much. Once their laughter peters out, Lance hooks his arm around the branch hanging over their heads, gazing out over the distant water.

“You know, I think I’d make for a dashing gunslinger,” he says, which causes Keith to snort out another laugh. Lance just looks at him with a grin. “I’m serious!”

“Okay, Lance,” says Keith, wiping at his eyes. “Whatever you say.”

“You’ll see!”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“My aim was amazing.”

“Throwing a rock is a _bit_ different from shooting.”

“Envy isn’t a good look on you, Keith.”

“I’m not—!” begins Keith, but Lance is giggling into his arm and Keith heaves a sigh. “Whatever. What’s that out there?”

“Ooh, trying to change the subject, are we?”

“Yes. What’s that?”

Scoffing, Lance follows his pointing finger anyway. Out in the water is a speck. Not unusual, since the harbour has its fair share of waterborne traffic, but to Keith it seems kind of… large. After a long moment of squinting at it, Lance huffs and shrugs.

“No idea. Big boat?”

“Really big boat.”

“Who knows how far out it actually is. Or maybe it’s a sea monster.”

Keith stares at Lance, whose mouth twitches. “Sea monster?”

“Don’t sound so thrilled.”

“ _Is there?”_

“You’re a gem, Keith,” says Lance, so obviously fond that Keith has to look away lest he see the embarrassed flush taking over his face. “I’ve got a few stories, though.”

“...Tell them to me?”

Keith can hear the smile in Lance’s voice. “So my uncle used to sail when he was our age, and he said that one night when the sea was calm…”

* * *

Keith wonders about sea monsters slain by heroes for longer than he thinks he ought to. When he’s training, he pictures Kolivan as a serpentine beast rising from the depths. Afterwards, he trades tales with Rolo and Nyma, who have an abundance of their own, whether it be the kelpie that lives in Bower Lake, or the will-o’-wisp in the northern forests.

The weekend can’t come fast enough. Determined to prove he can be just as good a storyteller as Lance, Keith helps load up the caravan with impatient speed. Nyma teases him for it, but her endeared parents think it cute and humour him by matching his speed.

Once at the market, he helps them set up as usual and then he’s gone in a flash, Nyma’s snickering the last he hears. He doesn’t see the usual people walking down the road, and it occurs to him that he’s a bit early this time. Figuring it isn’t a big deal, Keith doesn’t hesitate once he’s reached Lance’s house to bound up to the front door and knock.

With forced patience, Keith waits, but nobody answers. The road is eerily quiet. Keith steps back from the house to try to get a look through the window, but no matter how he cranes his neck, he can’t see anything. Picking up a pebble, Keith takes another step back and lobs it, this time aiming for the neighbouring window. It only takes two stones clattering against the glass for Katie to appear, opening the door carefully like she’s sneaking out.

“Why are you here?” she asks, voice hushed.

“Hi to you too,” says Keith. “I’m here for Lance, of course.”

She frowns at him, pushing her face through the rails enough that Keith can tell there’s something wrong with her eyes.

“Are you crying?”

With a grimace, Katie pulls her head back and angrily scrubs at her eyes. “No,” she says, and Keith can’t tell whether her voice is hushed so as not to disturb her family, or because she’s cried herself hoarse.

“Okay,” says Keith slowly. “Katie, where’s Lance?”

The girl lowers her hands, eyes redder than ever. “You don’t know?”

“Know _what?_ ”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

She frowns at him; Keith mirrors her expression.

“I don’t know,” she says. “He didn’t come home.”

A feeling uncomfortably like fear is trickling down Keith’s spine—but that’s not right, because Lance is _fine_. He’s always fine. He’s always waiting, every Saturday, for Keith to come play. He can’t just be… gone.

“How long ago?” asks Keith.

“Two days.” Katie’s breath hitches. Even from where Keith stands, he can tell her chin is trembling. “Same as Matt.”

Keith says nothing, dropping his gaze to the ground. His brain scrambles for an explanation, but he already can guess. It happened before, common enough that mothers would warn their kids of staying out past dark, elsewise the bad men would scoop them up. Don’t talk to strangers, they’d say. Keith feels lightheaded.

“Best get out of here,” says Katie. “They think you had somethin’ to do with it.”

Keith looks up with a jolt. “But I didn’t!”

The girl shakes her head, frowning deeply. “They won’t believe you.”

For a moment, Keith stands there frozen, staring up at the little girl wiping away fresh tears from her cheeks. Then a door slams somewhere, and Keith is running. Despite the heat, and the sweat dripping down his back, he feels chilled. The ice in his veins lends him speed to run all the way back to the marketplace, where Nyma and her family exchange startled looks.

“You okay?” asks Nyma tentatively.

“Yeah,” rasps Keith. “No. I… I’m feeling a bit sick…”

“Oh, okay, um. Ma?”

Keith focuses on his breathing until Nyma’s uncle comes to guide him across the bridge, to rest with the horses. He wards off any questions about his wellbeing until he’s alone, staring up at the canvas ceiling of the caravan, unable to process the mess in his head. Somehow time passes, his gaze never moving, until Nyma and her family come back. He forces himself to listen to the rambunctious tales they share, even if all he really wants is to curl up in a dark corner and think of nothing.

When they make it back to the wood, Keith immediately leaves to find Kolivan. The man isn’t seated at the fire, or resting, or roaming the nearby woods. It occurs to Keith that he doesn’t know exactly what it is he does when Keith isn’t with him.

Eventually, Keith begins asking around, and that’s how he finds Kolivan standing on the other side of the bridge, facing Bower Lake. Keith stops several paces away, staring at the long silver braid.

“Did you know?”

Kolivan doesn’t move. “You will have to elaborate.”

“Lance,” says Keith quietly. “Did you see what would happen?”

At this, Kolivan turns, milky white eyes landing on the boy before him. There’s nothing to be read in his expression, as though he isn’t surprised in the least that Keith knows what he can see.

“I only see that which will cause great change,” he says. “I have dreamt nothing of whom you speak.”

Waves crash in Keith’s ears, his blood roaring. How easily Kolivan could dismiss a single boy while raising another to be the change he speaks of, while the disappearance of that single boy felt like losing a part of Keith’s world all over again.

Keith leaves with his breath rattling in his lungs. From then on he goes to Bowerstone every weekend like clockwork, but no matter how many times Keith comes looking, Lance doesn’t return.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3c
> 
>  
> 
> [me tumblr](http://bitterbeetle.tumblr.com)  
> with tumblr about to die, my twitter is under the same name but i.......don't really use it yet


	4. awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After years on the road, Keith returns to Bower Lake to awaken that which Zarkon had feared so long ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i started writing in comic sans bc i heard it helps...........and it do. it really do. anyway sorry for the wait!! im back in birdland!! my coworker also writes fic so i'm using this as an opportunity to push myself to write more this summer c:

The shuddering of a wagon over uneven road doesn’t make for a good nap, but Keith manages up until it comes to a bumpy stop. He cracks open an eye to the wood and canvas above him, stacks of empty crates and sacks to either side, and the clunk of a boot against the footboard.

“We’re here,” announces a voice in smooth baritone. “You’re gonna need to move your ass.”

After a long stretch, Keith props himself up on his elbows and treats the young man gesturing at him to hurry up with a deadpan stare. “S’not like we’ve got anywhere to be, Rolo.”

“But the shit you’re blocking does,” retorts the man, stepping into the wagon with long legs he’s used to make fun of Keith’s—which are barely shorter, give him a break—ever since they went through their first growth spurts. “Shouldn’t you be a bit more excited to be home?”

Rolo grabs a stack of crates and drags them towards himself, bumping Keith’s hip and ankle along the way. Despite his grumbling, Keith helps unload the wagon to be converted back into a home on the edge of Bower Lake. The cooking fires are going strong, flooding the wood with the scents of roasted rabbit and vegetable stew, while the children run their fill. Having been on the road for some years, Keith hasn’t missed the culture of campfires and road meat, but it’s different here—this is home. A gate and dozens of watchful eyes means Keith can relax.

After eating and diverting the children to demand stories out of Rolo, Keith takes his travel pack and crosses the camp to the caravan he’d grown up in. It looks like the neighbouring auntie has continued to take care of it in his absence: the firepit is freshly cleared of ash, the weeds pulled from around the stationary wagon, and inside is free of the dust that Kolivan only ever asked Keith to deal with. The clothes will have to go, to make space for the gear he picked up on the road that actually fit the person he’d grown into.

Keith drops his pack on the floor to kneel by the bed. He lifts the thin mattress and reaches beneath to retrieve the threadbare scarf stuffed there. Even as a kid he hadn’t bothered to fold it neatly before running off, nor had he bothered to place a vow on it that he’d return stronger. None of that mattered in the end, with a fully grown Keith rubbing the faded red material between his fingers, smelling nothing but the echoes of musty wood rot and smoke.

With the season warm, Keith ties the scarf over his sword belt before leaving the caravan. He exchanges a few words with those sitting down for supper, avoids another round of story telling with the children that became teenagers in his absence, and finds Kolivan across the bridge, sightless eyes pointed towards the lake.

“I hope you did not unpack,” says Kolivan by way of greeting.

“Yeah, missed you too,” says Keith as he joins him in the light of the setting sun. “I didn’t. You sending me off again?”

As it always was and will be with Kolivan, Keith was sent off to gain worldly experience rather suddenly, practically shipped away in a caravan heading north for a new trade season. Except the season extended to another, and another, until Keith became more familiar with the feeling of dirt beneath his back than a bed.

“Yes, although the situation this time around is different. Where is your steadfast companion?”

Keith’s eyes follow the sudden movement of birds in flight along the treeline. “Hunting is my guess.”

“Very well. How do you feel?”

“Uh. Fine?”

“Then it is time, I think,” murmurs Kolivan, “that you swim across the lake.”

Keith moves half a step away. “You’re not gonna toss me in?”

“I should hope you have grown beyond that.”

“Me too,” says Keith, confident in his ability to avoid floundering, despite what could arguably be described as a traumatic experience learning how to swim in the first place.

Without further ado, Keith hops the fence separating them from the cliff and begins his descent. He hears Kolivan start to say something, but by then Keith is halfway down and skidding the rest of the way, until his boots hit sturdy ground. Satisfied with the rush, he trots off to rejoin the winding path towards the lake. Only when he gets there does he realize he doesn’t know the intended goal.

Some time later, Kolivan joins him at the shore, furrowed brow causing Keith to stand at sheepish attention. “Allow me to explain further,” Kolivan says calmly despite his frown, “but first I must give you this.”

In his outstretched hand is some kind of medallion. When prompted, Keith takes it from him to examine it with limited curiosity: something like an X-shape overlaid by a wonky S, all done in what Keith assumes to be iron. It doesn’t seem like something Rolo would consider fashionable.

“This guild seal is a powerful artifact,” explains Kolivan. “It is the sort of item that all heroes once carried, and will grant you entry into areas otherwise forbidden. It will also allow me to speak to you over distances, when necessary.”

“Really? How?” Keith flips the seal over to squint at every nook and cranny, ultimately finding nothing of note.

“You will understand shortly.” Kolivan turns his face towards the lake. “On the island is the entrance to a tomb, the key to which is this seal. You need only reach the chamber deep within and unlock that which has been sealed away.”

“Which is?”

“The magic you have so eagerly been wanting to use.”

Keith stares at Kolivan for a long moment, before tearing his gaze away to frown at the seal. After spending so much time away gaining worldly experience (Kolivan’s term for fighting bandits and living on the road), Keith has had plenty of time to wonder just _when_ he’d be able to follow through with his original end goal. “Is that necessary?”

“One does not head into battle ill prepared,” says Kolivan blithely. “Now, go.”

Keith wrinkles his nose but doesn’t argue, instead beginning the process of unbuckling his sword belt and toeing off his boots—that is, until Kolivan stops him with an eerie “You will be needing those.”

“Cryptic as ever,” Keith spits against lake water as he swims towards the island. It doesn’t make for a very comfortable swim, with his clothes dragging him down and his sheathed shortsword unbalancing his stroke.

Quickly he reaches the island, standing on large rocks unstable beneath his feet. It’s slightly strange seeing the tomb this close, having only ever seen it from the lakeshore—both smaller and larger, utterly disproportionate to the image he had in his mind. The island itself is overgrown with weeds and wild berries; Keith plucks some to taste.

Sudden movement in the long grass puts Keith on his guard, fingers curled around his sword hilt. There’s a snuffling sound, and a sneeze, before a familiar shaggy-furred wolfdog saunters out with the slow blink of an animal waking from a nap.

Eyeing her sodden coat, Keith snorts. “Raced me here, didja?”

The wolfdog gives herself an enthusiastic shake to dislodge the greenery that had been planting itself in her fur.

“Well said.”

Keith stands before the tomb door as he wrings out his clothes and empties his boots. At the center of the stone is an indentation much like the guild seal safely tucked away in his belt purse, but surrounding it is a circular pattern that Keith has seen twice before; once, in Fairfax castle, and again on the cover of a storybook.

“Third time’s the charm, right?” Keith says to an indifferent wolfdog.

Taking the seal from his pouch, Keith does what any other self respecting adventurer would do and sticks it against the door’s matching image. Having no other ideas beyond prying it open with his sword, Keith is relieved when Plan A works, and the door splits down the middle to grind inwards. Squinting into the shadows, Keith gives the tomb a cursory sweep. On a bracket is an unlit torch, completely swathed in cobwebs, and set into the floor is a wide staircase leading into the depths.

Keith steps up to the torch, taking out his flint and striking his belt knife against it. The sparks catch on the cobwebs, devouring it in a hasty flame that lands on the oil soaked cloth of the torch and bursts into life. Keith frees the torch from its bracket, then turns to reclaim the guild seal from the door. The wolfdog sniffs at the stairs in both curiosity and impatience.

“You ready, then?” Keith asks the wolfdog, who whuffs once before trotting into the darkness. “You’ve certainly got more guts that I do.”

Holding the torch aloft in one hand, the other resting on the pommel of his sword, Keith descends after her. Cobwebs floating above vanish in a flash of tiny flames; chunks of fallen rubble are kicked off to the side. Keith can’t help but wonder if Kolivan sent him in here not only for some magical soul quest, but also to clean the place up.

The stairs go on for some time before ending on a short hall. Keith walks down it slowly, lighting the old torches on either side as he goes. The flickering light illuminates alcoves in the walls, where stone tombs lie disturbed and in disrepair. It’s obvious that someone had come through here before, searching, but it must have been a very long time ago.

At the end of the hall, where Keith expects another staircase, is a hole. The wolfdog already stands at the edge of it with an expression as close to a scowl as a canine can get. Keith crouches beside the wolfdog and sticks the torch in as far as his arm will allow without overbalancing, but there’s nothing but darkness. Already resigned, Keith releases the torch and watches the flame cartwheel into the darkness.

_“Do not be afraid.”_

Keith yelps and scrambles back from the hole, every strand of hair standing at attention. He whips around, but it’s only him and the wolfdog in the hall, and besides, he’s fairly certain that familiar voice came from inside his head.

 _“I am using the guild seal to communicate with you.”_ Again, Kolivan’s strangely detached voice rumbles between Keith’s ears, muffled as if underwater. Keith pats at his head as if he might dislodge his mentor from his brain even as Kolivan continues, _“You must leap. The water at the bottom will break your fall.”_

“Oh, is that all?” mumbles Keith. “Shall I perform a triple somersault while I’m at it, just for the shits?”

_“I can hear you.”_

Lips pursed, Keith peers down into the darkness.

“Torchless freefall,” he says to the wolfdog. “You think you’ll be okay?”

She blinks at him.

“Mm, same.”

Keith straightens his back, sticks a foot out, and hops down. The fall is brief and the journey of his heart into his mouth just as quick as he crashes into sudden chill. A spike of fear stabs Keith in the gut as he reaches for the unknown surface, his eyes seeing nothing but blackness, his skin feeling nothing but cold, stagnant cave water.

 _Don’t panic, don’t panic_ , he repeats to himself until his head breaks the surface. He gasps for breath too soon, causing water tasting of stone to trickle down the back of his throat as he coughs.

Above him, the wolfdog whuffs as though impatiently urging Keith out of the way. He obeys, paddling in the darkness and listening for anything else beyond the splashing of the wolfdog as she lands and treads water—or at least he hopes that’s just her.

Now he’s seconds away from a panic attack as if he’s a kid waking up from nightmares of kidnappers all over again.

The wolfdog’s whine is barely audible over her splashing. Right, he’s got more important things to do—finding something to stand on, for one—than regressing in the middle of a cave lake. After much paddling and kicking and spitting out water, Keith’s fingers find a ledge gleaming blue from the weird fungus currently glowing to life around him.

Finding this exceptionally convenient, but not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Keith hauls first himself and then the wolfdog up out of the water. After wringing out his clothes yet again, it’s a simple matter of waiting until the fungi has reached maximum glow potential, and finding the nearest tunnel to follow. The rock becomes sand beneath his feet as he walks deeper beneath Bower Lake. He fully expects Kolivan to invade his mind if he blatantly follows the wrong tunnel. So far, so good. Assumedly.

“Gross,” mutters Keith as he squashes a hand-sized beetle that scuttles after his foot like it personally offended the insect. A minute later he’s forced to kick one into the wall, and another not long after that. It isn’t until the wolfdog begins whining that Keith realizes the beetles are growing in both number and size the further he goes. “Oh. Oh, that’s extra gross.”

It isn’t long before Keith is fending off the insects with his sword and dodging the glowing projectiles they keep lobbing at him. He doesn’t know what kind of effect they’d have on him, but he isn’t keen on finding out. The wolfdog wisely trots several paces behind him and the beetle juices he’s spraying all over the walls.

The beetles keep getting bigger and Keith keeps slaughtering them all until, eventually, they hit maximum girth and Keith nails the last of them in the thorax. The tunnel opens onto a bridge over the unknown depths, terminating at an old wooden door nearly twice as tall as Keith himself. He shoves it open with his shoulder, resisting the urge to rub at his ears when wood scrapes over centuries old grit.

 _“You have arrived in the Heroes’ Guild,”_ Kolivan says as Keith gazes up at a high domed ceiling.

Mosaics and old tapestries decorate the walls, depicting people in heroic form committing glorious deeds that Keith has no interest in. All sorts of random furniture are strewn about a circular dais, as though people had once used this place as extra storage. Except now it’s clear they’d left in a hurry.

_“For centuries, the guild trained the gifted sons and daughters of Albion, bound together by their blood. Once worshipped by the people, heroes became feared and hated. No one remembers the night the guild was burned, and now it lies forgotten.”_

At the top of the dais, set into the stone floor, is a magic circle, though one Keith has never seen before. Curves and straight lines cross each other into something that vaguely resembles a compass. Keith hesitates with the sudden thumping of his heart.

_“Whenever you are ready.”_

Bracing himself, Keith steps inside the circle. It feels like stepping into a pocket of warm, fragrant air, and immediately it begins to glow in recognition of his blood. It isn’t malicious magic. It won’t hurt him.

In the split second Keith wonders what his magic is supposed to be, he understands: he sees it in his periphery, feels it on his skin when he turns to it. He lifts his palm and flicks his fingers like a belt knife on flint. Flames pop into existence, clinging to his skin as though to burn him, but instead it consumes the magic he grants it.

 _Easy_ , he thinks, and the fire swells briefly in warning; it may be his, but he is not impervious.

There’s something else on the circle’s edge. When he faces it, the hair on his skin stands at attention, prickling. It’s wild and powerful and fast, like lightning. Just beyond it is more—a shadow that creaks, and a hollow voice moaning that Keith doesn’t like. There’s the cool edge of phantom blades, an indiscriminate pressure like the ocean bearing down on him, and furthest yet a blurring sensation as though the world is sliding to a halt. There’s other powers out of his reach, and Keith knows they’re there, just not for him.

When Keith pulls out of his revery, it’s with the memory of sparks within his palm.

_“You may now open the cullis gate.”_

* * *

Learning how to chuck fireballs at weird floating spheres aside, Keith doesn’t feel much different. Sure, he’s gone from run of the mill swordsman with a thirst for vengeance into a magic (still vengeful) flamethrowing swordsman half a day later, who alongside a wolfdog just stepped out of a portal at the top of a hill, but he doesn’t feel anymore powerful. Rather, the flames nibbling at the edge of his sleeve are just a shiny new weapon to master. Keith’s held plenty of unfamiliar weapons before, and he learned to kill a man with every single one. Literal magic fire can’t be any worse.

Instead of looking around at the towering stone slabs and magic circles decorating the top of the hill—just another Kolivan thing he’ll explain in time, probably—Keith looks out over the landscape to gain his bearings. To his right is water—probably a distant corner of Bower Lake, because visible in the distance are the jagged edges of Bowerstone, recognizable by the clocktower and the stupid castle towering even above that.

“ _Meet me in Bowerstone Old Town,_ ” rumbles mind-Kolivan.

If not for Kolivan, Keith would never hike all the way back to his old haunt. The wolfdog chooses to vanish for a jaunt in the woods instead of stepping foot back on city stone.

The bridge is the same, the market the same, the cobbled roads only worn down where he tries to see some difference in it. A few stores have changed—Keith tries to be interested, to force himself to care about anything than the memories of causing mischief with another kid.

Another kid whose face he can’t remember, and yet sometimes he wakes up in a cold sweat with the false memory of his abduction.

It only gets worse when he strides into Old Town. Trauma fermented over the years into something pungent that clings like the taste of bile. Keith looks around and sees everything and nothing: an alley where he’d saved a dog, not the two drunks giggling together now; the broken stones where an old wagon had been set up, not the woman juggling her groceries to the delight of watching children; the guard booth, where Varkon had handed out small jobs—

Keith doesn’t expect a soul to recognize him, a swordsman brimming with power, as the same street rat that tripped them underfoot in his mischief, but Var might be the exception. He looks surprisingly unchanged—still round, soft despite his muscle, shorter than most other guards—except for the new flood of grey in his hair. Keith doesn’t stick around to look any further.

He finds Kolivan in a courtyard on the edge of the plateau, tucked out of sight. It overlooks the town below, with a clear view of the ugly castle and a stretch of ocean horizon. Keith knows around the next corner might be a shack—or maybe not. Keith doesn’t go looking.

“Why couldn’t we just meet up at camp?” Keith asks as he joins Kolivan at the low wall, where he faces the ocean.

“There is something you must see.” Kolivan lifts a hand free from his draping robe to point towards the water. “You are most familiar with this horizon. Out there, do you notice anything amiss?”

Keith wants to point out he hasn’t been here in years, and he wasn’t the one who stared out at the view wistfully, but he holds his tongue. Squinting against the late sun, Keith scours the skyline for something that isn’t a speck of a fishing boat or a puff of cloud—unless that is what Kolivan wants him to look for? Maybe it’s a riddle. Keith barely stifles a groan.

Then he sees it—a smudge, like an island where an island hadn’t been before. Keith would have remembered. Probably.

“What _is_ that?” Keith wonders out loud.

Kolivan rests his hand on the wall. “That, young hero, is the Spire, though right now it appears tattered. Long ago, it existed in full, with enough power to grant a single request. Its creator wished for a world free from pain and sorrow, and thus the old world was destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” asks Keith, because the history of such a creation isn’t important so much as the result.

“Whatever the intent behind the wish, we cannot know how it might be granted.”

If Keith deigned to care, perhaps he might ask how it is Kolivan knows this. Then again, the answer would probably be _magic_. Or books. “So, you’re saying…”

“Once complete, Zarkon will be able to make a single wish using the Spire. We cannot allow him.”

“Right. ‘Cause he might explode the world again. I’m gonna need a boat.”

Kolivan turns away from the view to look passively at Keith. “You cannot face him yet.”

“Uh, why not?”

“We need information, but most of all we need allies. There are other heroes waiting to awaken, much like you. I can feel them.”

Keith scoffs. “Pretty sure I can just as thoroughly stick a sword in Zarkon’s face and be done with it.”

“You have only just awakened to your power over will—”

“The sword doesn’t need to be on fire to work.”

“It appears as though I may have been lacking in your training,” says Kolivan, flatter than ever. “Regardless, you must depart north at once. I have reason to believe a potential hero may be in Oakfield. Once you have arrived I will instruct you further.”

“Right,” says Keith, feeling very much the foot soldier but deciding to humour Kolivan anyway. With or without allies, Keith intends to stab Zarkon should he appear before him.

Taking one last look at the smudge of a threat on the horizon, and none for the shack in his periphery, Keith leaves Kolivan to prepare.

* * *

It’s nearing noon the following day when Keith returns to the forest camp from Bowerstone. He hadn’t even stayed a night yet and he’s already planning on leaving. At this rate the children will consider him a myth rather than just a grown version of the mischief makers they are now.

Keith finds Rolo perched on a barrel chatting with Vince, another caravan guard with the scarred freckles of puberty. Even now he scratches at his chin while Rolo leans towards him.

“How much?”

“Copper penny,” says Vince.

“Cheap,” mutters Rolo. “Whatever, I’ll take it.”

Keith leans into Rolo’s space with an arm draped across his shoulders. “What’re you betting on this time?”

“That I won’t ask how Kolivan how old he is,” Rolo says as he tips his head back to regard Keith.

“At least three hundred,” says Keith immediately.

Rolo snorts. “I don’t think he’ll appreciate being thought of as… ancient.”

“I don’t think he appreciates anything.”

“Not true,” interrupts Vince with the giddy smile of someone sharing a delightful secret. “He loves my gran’s sweet rolls.”

“...He never said that.”

“He did.”

“No way,” says Rolo.

“Yep.”

“Vince’s lies aside—”

“Hey!”

Rolo flashes him a charming grin that only works on people who’ve known him less than a week before looking back at Keith. “You leaving somewhere?”

Keith grimaces. “How could you tell?”

“Call it a hunch. Kolivan magics you away as soon as you arrived and it’s been years. He’s obviously gonna want you to do somethin’ or other for him.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Am I ever?”

“Folding a flush,” Vince pipes up. “Last week’s grease fire. The brewer’s daughter. The brewer’s son.”

“We’re gonna have words later, Vince.”

Grinning, Keith claps Rolo on the shoulder before stepping back. “After this, I’ll stay a night proper, I swear.”

“You’d better,” says Rolo, turning in his seat to give Keith a look that seems deceptively deadpan, if not for the years of familiarity that lets Keith see the disappointment. “Don’t end up like Nyma, gallivanting up’n down the coast. Forgetting her roots and all that.”

“No worries there. ‘Sides, looks like I’ll be heading for open water at some point. Maybe I’ll grab Nyma while I’m at it and bring her back for a proper visit.”

“Please. Her letters suck.”

Keith finishes his goodbyes in the camp before grabbing his pack from his caravan. He touches the scarf tied to his sword belt, considering folding it back up to avoid the grime of extended road travel, but decides against it. When he leaves it, the caravan seems a little emptier than before.

* * *

“Oho? Come to try and open me up again? I’m telling you, my boy, you are a far cry from ready!”

Keith kicks off a vine strangling his old seat, a soft stump covered in moss, before sitting down to regard the demon door. “Actually I came to say goodbye.”

As if he hasn’t been gone for years with no letters to send back to a literal cliff face, but one thing Keith knows about the demon door is that time holds no great meaning for it—that, or it’s been neglected for so long that it doesn’t know anything else. Keith doesn’t like to think too long about that.

“What’s this? Guilting me into opening?” The large stone face shifts oddly in a way that Keith has likened to tossing one’s head back to laugh. “Far cry, lad, far cry!”

“I’ve got to go find some heroes or something, so I won’t be back for… some time.”

The door doesn’t say anything for a long moment, though its eyes consider Keith in such a way he’d think solemn if he didn’t know any better. Finally the door’s rock moustache twitches with a smile as it says, “Well, as long as you do.”

“But if you wanted to give me a clue—”

“Far cry!”

“Fine,” says Keith, fighting the urge to roll his eyes fondly. “I’ll just have to keep trying then, won’t I?”

“I so look forward to meeting them!”

“Who? Whatever. Right.” Keith rises to leave but pauses adjusting his pack. “How old are you?”

The door stares. “Ah, pardon me?”

“In years. How long have you been...alive?”

“I’m not alive,” says the door with confused cheer. “I am sentient, but not alive.”

Keith frowns. “How’s that possible?”

“I have no heartbeat. No body of my own.”

“Uh, but your… door would be a body, wouldn’t it?” Unbidden, an image rises to the forefront of Keith’s mind of the door sprouting legs and popping free from the rock.

“Not at all. A door is a door, not a body. I am simply a gateway.”

That doesn’t sound right at all, but Keith doesn’t know enough about mind versus body philosophy to get into it with a magic demon door. Instead, he says, “For what it counts, I think you’re alive, so.”

The door smiles. “Thank you.”

* * *

As its name suggests, Oakfield is a glittering place full of oak trees—golden sunlight on pale bark and leaves like jewels. Most of the land bare of trees is swathed with farmed berry bushes, punctuated with scrap-clothed scarecrows. Keith casts his gaze around from the back of a wagon he’d negotiated a ride with in exchange for protection. The wolfdog has kept busy out of sight, though Keith can guess where she is by the flurry of panicked birds.

Farmland gradually becomes gardens and the trees overlap more thickly until it seems as though everything has taken on a green tint. At the village inn, Keith departs from the wagon and asks a local for directions to the Temple of Light, the name of which Kolivan rumbles in his mind.

From the inn, Keith takes a well worn footpath past the watermill and over a bridge between two low cliffs. When the village vanishes from sight, the wolfdog reappears, muzzle soaked in what Keith recognizes as giant beetle juice. Her tongue lolls out at him.

Keith reaches out to scratch her behind the ears. “You clear the way for me, girl?”

Her front paws tap the ground happily.

The path curves around a pond and up a ridge cupping the water. The higher he walks, the less trees offer their shade, until the full brunt of the sun is falling on Keith’s neck as he walks the last hundred meters to the temple. A domed building made of cream stone, the Temple of Light is decorated by carved statues sitting in alcoves set into the exterior wall. The wide doors are propped open. Inside, Keith finds himself the grimy center of attention of three monks robed in undyed linen. Three pairs of eyes drop to the mutt.

“Um.” Keith twitches into half a bow, uncertain as to how he’s supposed to act inside a temple. “Greetings?”

The youngest, a square-faced woman with short blunt hair, covers her mouth to stifle a giggle while the other two men raise their eyebrows.

“Welcome to the Temple of Light,” says the elder, grey-haired with deep wrinkles and wild eyebrows that settle serenely after Keith’s awkward first impression. “What is it that you seek?”

Keith stares blankly at them, hoping Kolivan will whisper something helpful in his brain. Nothing comes.

“Are you well?” asks the woman, now very much concerned.

“Sorry,” Keith mutters, then adds louder, “Kolivan sent me.”

Now it’s the monks’ turn to stare blankly. The wolfdog huffs.

“I guess you don’t know him then.”

The elder smiles apologetically. “I cannot say that I do. What is the purpose of your visit on this... Kolivan’s behalf?”

 _Now would be a great time to jump in_ , Keith thinks fiercely into the echoing cavern of his mind.

“I’m looking for a… uh… hero,” Keith says slowly, feeling especially foolish.

This time both the woman and young man snort. Something else washes over the elder’s features. His gaze flicks to the carvings on the interior wall; Keith sees robed monks carrying massive jugs, pouring liquid onto what might be an acorn that turns into a lofty tree encompassing most of the ceiling.

“What is it you seek in this hero?” asks the elder, drawing Keith’s eyes away from stone leaves. The younger monks look curiously at the elder.

“Strength,” says Keith.

“I see.” The elder looks to the woman. “Shay, would you please find Hunk and be sure he is prepared for the ceremony?”

The woman pins her arms to her side and nods. “Yes, yes of course. Pardon me.”

“And Rax, I do not mean to aggravate your wound, but please check on the acorn and the guard.”

“Yes, at once,” says the young man, and then both he and the woman are whisking out of the temple, the former with a stilted gait. The wolfdog trots after them as though she too has an important task to complete—probably to piss.

Once they’re out of sight, the elder levels Keith with a solemn gaze. “May I ask who you are?”

“Um. Keith. Sir.”

“Your family name?”

“Just Keith.”

“I understand,” says the elder, and Keith believes him. “You are gathering the heroes then. All of them?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“For what purpose?”

Kolivan remains silent, so Keith goes for transparency. “To prevent the Spire from being rebuilt.”

“Ah, yes. I have heard the legends, though fattened by the exaggerations of storytellers over the centuries. Regardless of the pomp, I do not wish to see such a pointless end to this world, no matter how foolish it is. I am well acquainted with the man you seek now, and I would gladly lend you his strength if it were mine to do so. However it is not. Simply put, he is not ready.”

“No offence, but I don’t think anyone ever is.”

“I cannot disagree,” says the elder with a solemn nod. “The problem herein lies with Hunk himself. I raised him from childhood—this temple is his home, the monks his family, the vows his livelihood. If you wish to recruit him, you must convince him yourself while also respecting the path he has chosen for himself.”

Keith valiantly keeps his eyebrows from raising skeptically. “So. How do I do that?”

“The Temple of Light performs a ritual every few decades. The land here is kept fertile by the blessings of the Golden Oak, which produces a single acorn at the end of its life. Tradition dictates that two monks of the temple gather holy water from the Wellspring of Light to be poured over the acorn when it is planted—one monk to carry the jug, and the second to accompany. The task of carrying the jug falls on Hunk, and while it may be unconventional, I wish for you to accompany him to the Wellspring.”

“Right.” Keith isn’t so sure about the entire Golden Oak spiel, but years on the road has taught him that insulting people’s traditions isn’t going to get him into anyone’s good graces. “Why me?”

“I am helping you steal away one of my children,” says the elder with a small smile. “I expect you to prove yourself as well.”

* * *

The elder sends him off to rest with instructions to return in two days’ time—so Keith sets to work chopping firewood at the inn while the wolfdog stretches out in the dappled sunlight. More than one local stops by to chat, and while it doesn’t slip his notice that the majority are women his age with a tendency to blush whenever he wipes his forehead, Keith pours most of his attention into the swing of his axe and the calculation of how much wood he’ll need to chop to afford six meals.

On the morning of his third day in Oakfield, Keith and the wolfdog take the path from the inn, past the watermill, over the bridge, through the beetle graveyard, and up the ridge to meet the young monk, Shay.

“Good morning,” she greets cheerfully before beaming at the wolfdog who basks in the attention. “And a wonderful morning to you as well, beauty.”

“G’morning,” says Keith, looking around. “Where’s this Hunk guy?”

“Already waiting at the entrance to the spring,” says Shay as she wiggles her fingers temptingly towards the wolfdog’s perked ears. “Has to be there early to meditate or some such.”

“Right, yeah.”

Shay points behind her at a low wooden gate barring the way of what looks like a deer track. “If you pass through here and continue down, you will find several collapsed pillars. They were once part of the entrance to the underground spring, but have degraded over the years. The entrance itself is perfectly intact, however, so there is no need to worry!”

Keith nods as though he isn’t imagining being trapped underground with only a nervous monk, a wolfdog and Kolivan’s disappointed voice in his head as company. After Shay gives the wolfdog a gentle pat with eyes like she plans on stealing her away, Keith opens the gate and follows the deer track.

The undergrowth tugs at his clothes and the red scarf on his belt. Even the wolfdog sticks to the path, snorting with distaste when a blackberry bush scrapes at her pelt. Ahead, sunlight pools over fallen columns being steadily swallowed by greenery. Part of them still stand on either side of a staircase leading into the ground. Pacing in front of the steps is a man dressed as a monk, albeit one who rolls his sleeves nearly up to his shoulders.

Keith takes one look at the monk’s biceps and understands immediately why Kolivan sent him here. He’s a full head taller than Keith, heavyset, with skin the colour of clay, but whatever intimidating aura Keith was expecting from the hero of strength is lost in the nervous hunch of the monk’s shoulders.

“You must be Hunk,” says Keith.

“You must be Keith,” replies the monk, followed by a resigned sigh and a nervous frown directed at the base of the ruins. A huge golden pot sits at his feet. “Well, might as well get this over with, right?”

Keith nods and takes the dilapidated steps two at a time, down into the shadowed entrance. “You ever do something like this before?”

“No,” says Hunk woefully. “Rax sprained his ankle last week, which means it all falls on me.”

“I’m guessing this Rax guy was a lot more dependable,” says Keith, trying to remember whether the guy who had limped out of the temple two days earlier had arms as big as Hunk’s.

“Hey! I mean. I guess. He’s a lot less nervous than I am.”

“What’s there to be nervous about?”

“Rats the size of my head. I’m not allowed to fight, you know. As a monk, I’ve taken a vow of nonviolence. Which means I can’t even kick rats. I’m asking you to kick them for me.”

“Right, designated rat-kicker. That’s me.”

The air at the bottom of the steps is cool and damp, and the area completely devoid of light. Keith reaches for a wall to search for a torch before remembering that he can literally summon fire, but Hunk beats him to it. With a scrape and a sharp clack, flames catch on the torch in the monk’s hand. Wordlessly, he passes it off to Keith before readjusting the jug under his arm.

Keith leads the way deeper, to another set of steps until the smooth rock under their feet dimples with water. It’s definitely eerie, but somehow less so than the guild. It probably helped that there was a distinct lack of tombs and grave robbing—and beetles. No beetles is definitely an upgrade.

His musing is interrupted by a high pitched yelp from behind. Sword half out of its sheath, Keith halts midspin to grin as the wolfdog bounds up to him, her tongue lolling out. After a cheerful greeting, she lopes on ahead, leaving an ashen Hunk staring after her.

“Ah,” says Keith, “she’s my dog.”

“What part of that is a dog?” hisses Hunk.

“General disposition?” offers Keith.

Hunk regards Keith with an expression of either fear or respect—it’s hard to tell with the guy.

“She’ll keep the rats at bay,” Keith assures him.

In the darkness ahead, the wolfdog whines impatiently. Keith follows the sound of her nails clicking against the stone. Behind him, he can feel Hunk’s anxiety growing. It’s as Keith is racking his brain for something to distract him with when they round a corner and find themselves in an antechamber spotted with sunlight. Hunk heaves a sigh of relief. Lowering the torch from his face, Keith steps further in and peers upwards. High above their heads is intricate metal grating grown over with ivy, tendrils of the stuff dripping downwards and shrivelling before ever reaching the floor. Keith wonders how many people have accidentally stepped on that grate and freaked out.

“Okay,” huffs Hunk, setting the jug down and regarding the room. Aside from the archway they had entered from, there are three other passages, all barred and gated. “I’m supposed to stand here—” Hunk edges past Keith to step onto a square tile that sinks slightly under his weight, “—and you stand on that one there.”

Keith follows his pointing finger to another tile in front of the leftmost gate. “So I’m really here just to stand on things and kick rats?” he says as he takes his position.

As soon as his weight rests on the tile, the gate opens with a series of metallic clunks and the grinding of a chain being pulled. Impressed despite himself, Keith doesn’t move from his spot until Hunk nudges him with the jug. The wolfdog bounds down the hall while Keith follows at a slower pace, torch held aloft in the dim light.

Through an archway is a tall room with similar grating in the ceiling. Two statues face one another from opposite sides of the room, one holding a bowl over his head, and the other poised as if to pour the contents of her large jug. Hunk scrutinizes the room long and hard even after Keith goes on ahead, feet splashing in inch-deep water.

Finally, Hunk instructs Keith to stand on the pressure plate in front of the statue with the bowl, while he himself moves the golden jug beneath the other statue’s. When they’re both in position, a stream of water abruptly pours from the ceiling, landing in a hole on top of the stone jug and pouring from the lip into the golden one below it. It’s all very interesting, Keith’s sure, but he’d rather gather water from the pond and bless that instead.

They stand there for awhile before Hunk decides they have enough from this room. They return to the antechamber and reorganize themselves on the pressure plates until the first gate shuts.

The second gate opens into a hallway much the same as the first. At the end, however, where Keith expects stairs he instead finds an open cavern and a narrow snaking path of stone, at the bottom of which is water black as pitch—and no discernible way of climbing back out. Spaced periodically are platforms and, in the center of the cavern, some sort of walled structure. The lighting is a chilly blue provided by what appear to be glowing balls, drifting slowly around the roof of the cavern.

“Why?” whispers Hunk morosely.

“The things you do to dump water on an acorn,” Keith mutters in response. “I’ll go first and test the footing.”

Thankfully the rock isn’t too slick, and they make it to a platform with no problems. At worst, the wolfdog seems annoyed by the slow pace set by the two humans she’d foolishly allowed to pass in front of her.

The blue glow seems to intensify as they near the walled structure, which turns out to be a roofless room with old pots much like the one Hunk is currently carrying—and skeletons, clothed in rags with weapons still clutched in their fleshless hands.

“Why,” Hunk says again, flatly.

“Atmosphere?” suggests Keith as he walks straight for the other exit.

“Wait!”

“What, are you tired already?”

“No—the light!”

Keith pauses to look up. Several of the glowing spheres spiral gently downwards like bright snow. As the two men look on, each light falls upon a skeleton and sinks into dirty bone. The wolfdog starts to growl as the bones click, joints knit together with glowing threads, rising up until there are four hollow skeletons twitching on stilted legs. Hunk whimpers.

“I’m gonna go ahead and say they’re not friendly,” Keith says as eyeless sockets lock onto him.

Keith takes the initiative, replacing torch with sword and chopping at a grimy skull. The skeleton blocks the slash with a cutlass and retaliates with a wide swing that nearly guts Keith on the spot. He leaps back as the wolfdog launches herself at the skeleton, clamping down on its sword arm and tearing the limb right from its magical socket.

“Time to move!” Keith snaps at a horror-struck Hunk.

The skeletons are surprisingly fast. They jump forward, swinging weapons enthusiastically but without much technique. Keith parries the blows with difficulty—something about the light had lent them inhuman strength. Belatedly, Hunk snaps out of it and clutches the jug to him desperately as he wheels around and bolts out of the room.

Keith ducks a broadaxe and blocks a cutlass and kicks a set of ribs before following. The skeletons give chase, ignoring the wolfdog snapping at their heels. The path widens into a platform ahead. Keith whirls as soon as his footing will allow it, neatly lopping off the head of a skeleton and sending it spinning into the abyss with a splash. The other skeletons stumble over their comrade’s bones but keep coming.

“Nobody told me about walking skeletons!” wails Hunk, voice echoing as he runs on—or tries to, with his burden. “This is irrational! I’m a _monk_ , not a warrior!”

Keith cracks another skeleton over the head, leaving a hole in its skull the shape of his pommel. “You’ve got muscles thicker than my head, Hunk.”

“For lifting— _eek!_ —giant urns of sacred water, if that— _get away!_ —isn’t apparent!”

The wolfdog rips a leg out from under Keith’s opponent, giving him the opportunity to turn and see Hunk on another platform, dodging around a new cluster of skeletons in a bizarre sort of dance.

“Put the water down and fight back!” Keith shouts as he moves to assist, only for a skeleton to block his way.

Hunk shrieks as he tempts the edge of the platform, spinning out of the way of a broadsword whose weight pulls its wielder cartwheeling into the depths.  “I took a vow of nonviolence!”

“For the love of—” Keith cuts off as the skeleton before him swings its axe at his head. Metal scrapes on metal as Keith’s sword intercepts and locks guard against hook. “Shit.”

Nearby, the wolfdog snarls fiercely around the bones pinned between her jaws, their owner ignorant of the beast dragging from behind as it approaches Keith’s open side. The axe-wielding skeleton bears down on Keith with all its magic-enhanced weight, empty sockets so close that Keith sees the centuries old grime where the nerves used to be. Sweat drips down the side of Keith’s nose as he struggles to keep his sword aloft and the axe blade away from his face. Bone drags on rock as the second skeleton approaches, lifting a short sword.

“ _Shit_ ,” says Keith more emphatically. He’s pouring sweat, from exertion and the heat rolling off him in waves—oh, right.

He dives for the second skeleton before its blade descends. His own sword is wrenched from his hands as the axe it’s locked with strikes stone and sparks. With one hand, Keith grabs the pommel of the enemy sword, keeping the blade pointed towards the ceiling, and shoves the other into the skeleton’s ribcage. Fingers spread wide, Keith recalls the sensation of heat crawling to the top of his palm, changing from memory to reality in a burst of orange flames.

The skeleton drops in a clatter of smoking bone and incinerated rags. Impressed, Keith wastes no time spinning around to provide the axe-wielding skeleton with the same service.

Keith makes quick work of the rest, much to Hunk’s relief as he sets the jug down and slumps to the floor beside it.

“I should… be horrified…” Hunk pants, “but… I’m just relieved. Where… can I learn… a trick like that?”

“It involved jumping blind into a seemingly bottomless hole.”

Hunk sits up. “Nevermind! Onward!”

* * *

Between the indiscriminate bombing of skeletons, hurling of fireballs and standing on pressure plates, Keith has to wonder how this person—muscles aside—could possibly be a hero. There’s a lot more to a hero, especially one of strength, than just the circumference of his chest. Watching Hunk, Keith doubts he has what it takes.

He panics at the first sign of danger—of which there is, apparently, a lot—with a wavering resolve to either shield the jug, or use the jug itself as a shield. He refuses to involve himself in any of the fighting (not a flaw in the eyes of the temple monks, but a massive one to Keith, who is learning that his supply of magic is not bottomless), takes any and all opportunities to point out how awful the whole situation is, and laughs inappropriately when Keith trips over the wolfdog and faceplants in stagnant cave water.

But above all, he is obviously not the sort of person to leave his family.

In the middle of blasting a single file line of the undead into the second afterlife, Keith asks, “Hunk, you ever think of dropping everything and joining a bunch of heroes on a quest to defeat a jackass from doing something magically stupid?”

“Uh,” says Hunk. “Never?”

“That’s what I thought,” Keith sighs.

If there’s one thing the monk has learned, it’s that he can wail about his apparent mortality while still filling the urn. That, at the very least, is improvement.

They encounter complications at the last gate, which opens a foot off the ground and sticks. Hunk, bowed and sweating under the weight of the full jug, looks three seconds away from breaking his vow, until the wolfdog slips under the gate and bounds off down the hall.

When she returns, the gate finally gives and rolls upward, allowing her to trot through and dump a skull with glowing eye sockets at their feet.

“Oh, who’s a good girl?” Hunk croons. “Who tears the heads off evil killer skeletons? Is it you? Is it you, girl?”

The wolfdog bounces on her front paws.

As they approach the final room, Keith rolls the wolfdog’s gift from hand to hand. “There’s probably something very mean and very strong waiting for us.”

“I am eternally grateful for your assistance,” says Hunk.

“Right, you’re welcome, but it’d be easier if you could do a little more than carry that thing. I was thinking distraction tactics. I could give you the basics for using a sling.”

Hunk grunts under the weight of the jug. “I’m sympathetic, but that’s technically violence.”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em.”

“Except I made a—”

“A vow,” interrupts Keith. “I know, I’ve heard. Look, promises are great and all but in the face of your own death, wouldn’t you maybe want to… put the jug down? For a minute or two? Help a guy out?”

“I took this vow for Abbot Hardwen,” Hunk says with a frown. Keith purses his lips and says nothing more. It was worth a try.

They’ve reached a gated archway, the wrought iron stuck open with decades of dark-loving fungus, when Hunk sets the jug down with a sigh. Keith turns to look at him, an eyebrow raised.

“I understand why all the monks make such a vow for the abbey,” says Hunk, gazing down at the as yet unblessed water, “but I don’t agree. Violence is fighting and if I have to fight to protect what—or who—I care about then I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”

Having grown up fighting tooth and nail to do just that, Keith can relate. What he doesn’t understand is Hunk’s willingness to follow through with a direct contradiction. “Then… why don’t you?”

“I can’t break it for a situation already being handled.” Hunk lifts his gaze and grins at Keith. “No offence.”

“Absolutely none taken. Still wish you’d put those muscles to use.”

“I’d like to see _you_ carry this thing,” mutters Hunk as he crouches to lift the jug back over his shoulder.

Keith’s mouth quirks into a smile—but that’s dangerous. That’s beginning to see positive qualities—reasons to like him—when Keith knows the world is a dark and hungry place ready to devour as soon as a spot of good is discovered. Maybe that’s why he was relieved when Nyma ran off to the coast, why he so readily left Rolo after years together on the road, because living is just a countdown to the next person exiting stage left from Keith’s life.

Maybe that’s why Keith does whatever Kolivan says. He gives Keith a reason to leave first.

After squeezing past the gate, the three stand in another room not unlike the others—water all over the ground, statues, greenery trying to reach them from the grate above. The only clear differences are the stairs curling up behind a statue poised with a hammer, and the headless corpse sitting at its base. A longsword rests across its knees, one hand on the hilt, and Keith looks down at the glittering eyes of the skull cupped in his hands.

The corpse rises to its feet and gives the longsword an experimental swing. The water’s surface ripples from the force. Hunk looks at Keith looking at the skull and makes a thoughtful sound.

“They can’t move once their heads are destroyed, right?” asks Hunk.

“Let’s make sure,” Keith says as the skull drops from between his hands and lands with a splash. The corpse moves to rush them, but Keith’s heel is faster, shattering half the cranium in one kick.

Hunk and Keith stare at the headless corpse; the wolfdog paws at the skull with something like disappointment.

The blade whistles through the air, missing Keith’s head by a hair's breadth and only because he slips in his surprise. He rolls, drawing his sword as he rises to parry the skeleton’s next strike. The sensation jars up Keith’s arms and numbs his hands.

A blast of fire forces the corpse to hesitate as Keith puts distance between them. Hunk has retreated to the staircase, the wolfdog splashing around noisily and snapping at exposed bone. The distraction doesn’t work nearly as well as both Keith and the wolfdog hope. The longsword’s reach is impressive (intimidating) and the speed with which it slices even more so (terrifying).

A long cut sends Keith reeling backwards. The edge misses, of that Keith is sure, except a line of red appears on his chest.

He tries to remember the feeling of heat, but adrenaline blurs his concentration. The skeleton is gaining the upper hand. Every strike comes a little closer to hitting its mark. The wolfdog latches on to a femur and holds on, but the headless skeleton grabs her by the scruff and wrenches her off. She hits the floor with a splash and a yelp.

Keith recalls fire then—it races down the length of his blade as if he’d soaked it in oil. The flames stretch with his swings, elongating every strike into something nearly solid, painting burning pictures in the air. The skeleton doesn’t seem to care about the charring of its bones as Keith chips away at it. Inevitably, such is its downfall, reduced to chunks of black as it tries to hack with a sword attached to an arm no longer attached to a body.

By the time Keith is finished, his head is pounding and his throat dry and hot. He turns to look at Hunk—plastered to the wall, clutching the jug—torn once again between horror and respect.

“After all that,” pants Keith, “and not a single rat?”

A beat of silence, then Hunk bursts out laughing. Keith plucks at his sweat-soaked shirt, stained red by a shallow cut bleeding sluggishly down his front. As he wipes halfheartedly, the wolfdog walks up, ears perked and tongue lolling as though she hadn’t just been flung aside.

“Wish I had your constitution,” Keith tells her.

The unnecessarily large jug of cave water is blessed into holy water perfect for soaking a golden acorn that is probably just as unnecessarily large as everything else. Hunk looks proud though, so Keith doesn’t share his cynicism.

Hunk is just muscling the jug into his arms when the gate at the top of the stairs bursts open. The sword Keith points at the intruder drops when he recognizes Shay, though her face is red and splotchy from exertion—and her eyes wide with terror.

“The abbot,” gasps Shay. “One of—one of Zarkon’s men—he’s holding my father hostage at the temple! He’s got a gun!”

Hunk drops the jug; it tips ominously before coming to a safe rest upright. “What does he— _Why?”_

“You!” she cries. “I don’t know why but he is demanding you!”

Between that moment and the next, when Hunk is ripping a hammer free of a statue’s grasp, Keith understands: Zarkon knows Hunk is the supposed hero of strength, and that means everyone in the temple is in danger, and always will be.

“I’m coming,” says Hunk as he leaves the jug behind and races fleet of foot up the stairs to Shay’s side.

Outside, rain comes down in sheets. They’re at the top of a hill with a sheer drop between them and the deer track. Beyond, Keith can see the glow of the temple’s lights. Hunk is already off, leaping down with a thud that can’t be easy, Shay somehow keeping up. The wolfdog is next, jumping down from narrow ledge to narrow ledge. Keith follows, the landing jolting up his legs and buckling his knees. Gasping for breath, he shoves himself upright and staggers after the distant blur of Hunk and Shay through the rain.

Something is very wrong. Keith’s legs are lead, his head throbbing with imagined thunder. It must be all the magic he used. His stamina is shot. Still he runs on like he’s dragging weights by the ankle, his feet colliding with the ground like brick and his lungs choking on rain. Something glints unnaturally smooth through the treetops, but when Keith looks it’s already gone.

The domed temple comes into view next. Ahead are raised voices, terrified and angry. Keith tries to push himself to run faster and only seems to move slower.

“You’re coming with me—or he dies.”

“Like hell I am!”

“Stand down, Hunk!”

“No, they can’t—”

“Please! Stand down!”

The temple doors are open wide; two monks, Shay and Rax, cowering in his line of sight, and the flick of a black cloak.

Then a gunshot, and Hunk’s scream.

Keith crosses the threshold to see the broad arc of Hunk’s hammer as it falls upon the head of a stranger in black. A flintlock pistol clatters to the polished floor, now pooling with red from two bodies.

“I could have stopped him,” Hunk gasps on air too thin. “I could have stopped him before he— I could have—”

Keith can only stand there as Hunk weeps, with rage and grief, over the elder’s still-warm corpse.

* * *

The funeral is the same day as the Golden Oak ceremony. Leading up to the ritual, Keith earns himself new blisters chopping wood nonstop until he has more money than he reasonably knows what to do with. There’s nothing else to be done—Kolivan has denied comment, and Hunk is…

Keith doesn’t know the monk well, but even he can see his grief is destructive. Shay and Rax, while obvious in their mourning, tried to convince Hunk to be open with his feelings—to share them, and heal. Hunk disappeared. While concerned, nobody went looking for him. They know he’ll be back for the ceremony.

The morning of the Golden Oak ceremony and Abbot Hardwen’s funeral dawns bright and clear. At the top of a hill overlooking the land of Oakfield, a spindly gold sapling sprouts from a mound of freshly churned dirt, marking the resting place of the elder and the new growth of the Golden Oak. A half circle of monks in their everyday robes stand around the grave; Keith hangs back, out of place, as they begin recitations.

“Bit stuffy, huh?” murmurs a voice to Keith’s left.

He turns his head to find Hunk, brows heavy over swollen eyes, gaze on the other monks. He’s wearing his robes, but wrapped and belted around his limbs instead of loose. Keith notices, when he reaches up to rub an eye, that the circle of his palms are blistered.

“You okay?” asks Keith, immediately wincing. “I mean. Your hands.”

Hunk blinks down at his blisters. “Oh. Yeah. I needed a distraction.”

Keith glances over his shoulder, half expecting a giant hammer to be propped up against something.

“I heard what you spoke to the abbot about,” says Hunk, bringing Keith’s attention back to him. The monks are bowing towards the oak sapling now. “That’s what you meant when you mentioned a quest. I want to help.”

For a sick moment, Keith wonders if this is what Kolivan sent him to wait for: another heartbroken orphan vowing vengeance for their dead family, seeking direction, preparing for a battle with stacked odds. Maybe that’s just what makes a good hero.

“Are you sure you can do it?” Keith asks slowly.

“There’s nothing left for me to do here. If there’s something that only I can accomplish, whether as some hero of strength or a failed monk or just a normal man, I want to do it.”

Keith looks into his eyes and sees a man already terrified, but determined nevertheless.

“You’ll need to say goodbye.”

One monk straightens before the rest—Shay, gazing in their direction. She smiles; it’s somehow reassuring.

The set of Hunk’s mouth is grim. “I already have.”

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](http://bitterbeetle.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](http://twitter.com/bitterbeetle)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> now that all that Dull and Dreary set up is out of the way it's time to get this party STARTED. chapters will probably be shorter bc this wasn't supposed to be NEARLY THAT LONG. gotta watch myself. can't wait to get the squad...........together.............


	5. eyrie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introductions are made, and Hunk asks far fewer questions than one might expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unedited for now sry in advance if there are glaring issues. initially this was gonna be another 10k chapter but i realized i am perfectly capable of splitting it in half. i still have no idea how many chapters there will actually be.

A scarecrow marks the boundary of Oakfield. Though it doesn't really, but according to Hunk it does to the locals. It’s also his first time seeing it in person.

“You’ve never left Oakfield?” Keith asks incredulously. “Not once?”

“Never,” confirms Hunk, twisting the grip on his hammer anxiously.

It’s the same warhammer as he’d torn from the statue, supposedly a viable weapon and not carved from whole stone. Keith suspects that’s some kind of sacrilege, but he’s not a monk so he doesn’t ask. The haft is wrapped in several different fabrics to create grippable texture without leather, a sash of yellow knotted at the end, and the head polished free of ancient grit and moss to reveal gleaming iron.

It looks painfully heavy, but Hunk carries it as though it’s nothing and never complains. Must be magic.

“Did you never want to go?” asks Keith.

“Kind of. At first.” Hunk stares at the scarecrow as if it might come alive and pull him over—or refuse to let him pass. “I always assumed I was born here, but I wasn’t. Some traders left me behind and A-Abbot Hardwen took me in. When I learned that I just… thought the outside was scary.”

Keith kicks a rock across the invisible boundary and the wolfdog goes careening after it. “It’s not like the grass suddenly changes. It’s the same grass. Same trees.”

“I know that but it doesn’t make me worry any less,” mumbles Hunk.

He does, eventually, walk forward with a stony expression.

As it turns out, Hunk is a decent travelling companion. He understands division of labour, knows his edibles, and combines them in ways that brings out flavours Keith didn’t think was possible. The one major downfall is the fear with which he treats everything new, and this whole situation is new.

Instead of trying to coax him into relaxing, Keith chooses the blunt and direct route: telling him what to expect, the possibility of being jumped, what dangers are actual dangers and what are nuisances at best. Somehow this works. Apparently Hunk’s expectations were far worse than the reality, and that’s saying something when Keith has lived through over a dozen night raids and desperate animal attacks. There was also that time when a moose with brainworm wandered into camp. True terror.

Thankfully they make it to Bower Lake without further incident. Keith decides not to visit the demon door for the sole reason that Hunk would probably faint. They head straight for the top of Hero Hill, as Kolivan calls it in Keith’s head. Hunk takes far more interest than Keith in the magic circles—four in all—set into the ground, and the pillars of stone around the perimeter.

“Do you know what these mean?” asks Hunk as he crouches to get a better look at the center circle.

“Not a clue.”

Hunk shoots him a reproachful look. “Maybe you should take an interest.”

“I have an interpreter,” says Keith with a shrug.

As if on cue, Kolivan appears in a blaze of light emitted by a metal sphere sunk into one of the stone pillars. Hunk yelps; Keith squints against the light.

In lieu of a greeting, Kolivan jumps right to the meat of the matter. “Welcome to Hero Hill, Hunk. This sphere is called a cullis gate, and serves as the doorway between here and the guild beneath the lake. You will have opportunities later to see it.”

He pauses, as if to give time for Hunk to digest his entry and lack of introduction. Before he can plough on with a riddle about fate or something equally terrible, Keith interrupts Kolivan with a formal introduction.

“Hunk, this is Kolivan. He’s old and magical and the reason for all the fire stuff.” With a snap of his fingers, Keith summons a blob of fire that rolls across his knuckles before extinguishing.

“Wow, great,” says Hunk in a voice that borders on the edge of a meltdown.

“He’s helping me figure out how to stick Zarkon,” Keith explains.

This does something weird to Hunk’s face, which twists and shutters and crumples out of his control. After a moment, Hunk clears his throat several times, squares his shoulders, and looks at Kolivan.

“Can you help me get to Zarkon?” he asks.

Kolivan inclines his head slightly. “You are the hero of strength. You will meet him.”

“That’s a yes,” says Keith. “I think.”

Hunk shoots Keith a look and mutters, “I thought you said _he_ was the translator.”

“He—” Keith coughs to cover a snort. “Ahem. He’s got the will-power-y junk covered. I’m the people person.”

“Thank you for that vote of confidence, Keith,” says Kolivan, not at all grateful. “Now if you have no pressing questions—”

Hunk interrupts with a raised hand like a schoolchild. “Just… just one, for now. Um. This hero of strength stuff… what is it?”

A slow blink all around—perplexed from Hunk, unreadable from Kolivan, and resigned from Keith as Kolivan turns his blinking towards him.

“I thought I’d let you cover it,” says Keith blandly. He also thought Kolivan would have known ahead of time given his ultimate tool of eavesdropping that sits in Keith’s beltpurse.

The blank slate of Kolivan’s expression turns back to Hunk as he explains, “Lord Zarkon has devised a plot to build a structure known as the Spire—a powerful magical artefact from the Old Kingdom that in his hands could very well destroy the known world. Heroes of strength, skill, and will are required to put an end to his plans, which have long since begun.”

Clearly weighing his options, Hunk looks at Keith with raised eyebrows that Keith returns. After a moment of contemplation and staring, Hunk asks Kolivan, “Then… which hero is Keith?”

“The central figure, with aspects of all three.”

“That means I can’t do the fire thing?”

Kolivan raises his eyebrows, just barely. “Would you like to?”

“Maybe not fire,” admits Hunk sheepishly, “but being able to float things around would be super useful.”

An image of flying swords impaling distant enemies comes to Keith’s mind. Forget crossbows and slings, he vaguely remembers someone saying something about a power like that.

“Unfortunately,” says Kolivan, “you do not appear to have the affinity over will.”

Crestfallen, Hunk asks, “How can you tell?”

“It is one of the few things I can see,” says Kolivan simply. “Now, if all is in order and Hunk has agreed to join the guild—however temporary—then we may proceed with the plan of action.”

“Oh, right.” Hunk brightens, as if starting his journey to slay a lord is something to emit sunshine about. Keith can understand. “Yes, please, right away.”

Keith wants to tell him to take it easy, but he knows the burn for action that no doubt spurs him on. It must be even more powerful because Hunk is an adult—as a child, Keith had no choice in the matter, forced to take it slow, build himself up for this purpose over a sprawl of years. Nobody asks an adult if they’d rather take a few years to prepare.

“You will be looking for the hero of will next.”

Hunk nods readily, then pauses and cocks his head. “How do you know? And me as well, how did you decide?”

“With you it was rumour and intuition,” Kolivan says in a way that sounds like a riddle. “The hero of will, however, is conjecture. It is easier to find something when one knows what to look for.”

“Neat,” says Keith. “Where are we going?”

“Brightwood. It will be a slightly longer journey than from Oakfield. I suggest you set off at once.”

“Right, I have a question. Can’t we use the cullis gate to teleport there or something?”

Hunk frowns. “Then why didn’t you teleport to Oakfield?”

“Another great question, Hunk.”

“The available gates require a surge of will to activate, and presently lie dormant. I may be able to trace their locations given the previous connections between the gates, but it will take time we do not have when you are perfectly capable of travelling distances by your own power.”

A very Kolivan way of saying _shut up and start walking_.

“Alright, who’re we looking for?” Keith decides to ask instead of waiting for Kolivan to mindspeak it to him (or fail to do so, leaving him floundering in front of unfamiliar monks. Thanks Kolivan.)

“A man by the name of Alfor. His is the last strong bloodline in magic. Even if he is not the hero of will, he will have a good idea as to where to look, whether for latent ability or other hidden users.”

“Hold on a minute,” Hunk says quickly. “You’re telling me there are _more_ people who can toss fire around?”

“Not only fire,” says Kolivan, “but most things conceivable can be tampered with. Alfor is a genius in the manipulation of will, and Zarkon knows this. He will want his help.”

Keith recalls the sensation of stepping into the magic circle, of the flames coming easy to him but the other abilities tempting in his periphery. He assumed fire was it for him, but if this Alfor guy could do more, then why not Keith?

* * *

The road to Brightwood narrows between wide tree trunks and gnarled roots, making the already uneven terrain even more bumpy. There is no village in the wood, but dilapidated statues and broken arches remain of what people used to exist in the region. Now all who linger are travelling merchants, the occasional guardsman, and an abundance of bandits.

The first time they’re jumped, Keith nearly starts a forest fire, but the bandits flee. The second incident ends with Keith bandaging Hunk’s arm because he hesitated. By the third, Keith rests assured that word will pass along that the two travellers fitting their description are not to be trifled with. It’s reassuring

Past the mossy remains of half an amphitheater, Keith spots their destination—the tip of a tower, poking out above the canopy. The closer they get, the further Keith is forced to crane his neck to see the top. While full of energy even on bad days, there’s no amount of training that would prepare Keith for a tower packed with stairs. He hopes, in the same vein as hoping the edge of his sword sticks and it’ll be snowing when it happens, that the place of Zarkon’s execution won’t be somewhere with that many stairs.

They jump the low wall extending around the estate, landing in an overgrown courtyard. The water inside the fountain is thick and green. A set of wide and shallow steps lead up to another courtyard, and another, creating a path of weeds and carved stone towards the ivy-strewn tower.

They’re crossing a bridge over a ravine towards the last courtyard when the thing appears: cut like a misshapen gem and just as shiny, black as onyx with edges like glass, and as tall as Keith and Hunk combined if not moreso. It hangs in midair, turning slowly in place.

“What the everloving chickenshit is that?” croaks Keith. Whatever it is, it’s wrong.

And proves it when a crackle of lightning snaps out of the shard, making landfall and bringing into existence a burly man all in black, like the metal of his armor had been doused in soot.

“Oh,” says Hunk faintly as half a dozen more soldiers are zapped to the ground. “That doesn’t seem very fair.”

Then a soldier in a sweeping black cloak appears among them, and Hunk goes directly on the attack. Keith is a beat behind him. Metal rings out against metal as Keith redirects a strike meant for Hunk’s back. His blade slides up to cut the offending soldier’s throat, and Keith moves on.

The sound of Hunk’s hammer is sickening even when it misses to crush rock. Hunk roars with uncharacteristic fury, swinging the maul with so much force that Keith can hear it from where he’s dispatching a second enemy. He methodically moves from foot soldier to soldier, slicing and stabbing between gaps in armor, blinding and winding and tripping and breaking. By the time he’s done, the only enemy left is the cloaked one leaping away from Hunk’s rage.

Keith moves to assist but Hunk’s bellow stops him. “ _No!_ He’s mine!”

The hammer strikes stone and the soldier’s blade runs a line of red across Hunk’s bicep. The next swing of the hammer is weaker. Another cut across Hunk’s shoulder, and one too close to the meat of his thigh. Keith grinds his teeth together and prepares to step in regardless of Hunk’s wrath, but in the next moment the soldier gets too close, Hunk’s hammer reaches him first.

Keith stands over Hunk as he gasps for breath, gore coating the face of his hammer and rock dust in his hair. Above them, the shard moves off closer to the tower and crackles with lightning.

“Next time,” Keith says with forced calm, “I won’t watch you be cut down in a fit of stupidity.”

Panting, Hunk turns his face to glare up at Keith. “You think… _you_ … would act any different?”

“The difference,” Keith hisses, “is that I’ve been preparing for this my entire life. You have not. You’re not a warrior, Hunk, and it’s too late to pretend to be.”

Hunk rises to his feet, chest heaving. For a long moment it seems as though he’ll argue, but the shard zaps ahead, and Keith brushes past to strike first. The cloaked figures appear to be commanding officers—Keith kills the next one on sight. Without someone to channel his rage towards, Hunk fights with little to no recklessness, calculating his swings, keeping his distance before the head of his hammer reaches his target. With his vow and vengeance broken and stifled, it turns out Hunk is a decent man to fight alongside.

They reach the tower. Sounds of a struggle echo down from the top, streaming out through the broken entryway. Keith takes point, muttering about stairs as he cuts down everyone ahead of him. The higher they go, the hotter the air becomes. At the top, their way is blocked by a mound of broken furniture—chairs, bookcases, a desk snapped in half, and all of it burning the colour of sunset.

The sounds of fighting are loudest here. Through the flickering flames, shadows of soldiers hack at someone who raises arms wreathed with lightning—except the light does not flicker erratically or lash out like lightning is prone to do.

Keith abruptly remembers walking down a long hall with expensive tapestries, and watching a man walk by with veins that shone white. _Alfor_ , Keith thinks, up until the moment the soldiers crumble like brittle stone, and he sees a thick tumble of white hair and a young face, twisted with ferocity.

This is not a middle-aged scholar, this is a woman Keith’s age, wearing a nightgown stained with blood and soot.

Her eyes meet Keith’s across the flames; he moves towards her, but the fire tastes magic and leaps for his skin. Keith reels back into Hunk, who prevents them from tumbling down the tower stairs.

Behind the woman rises a plume of thick smoke. From within steps out a man taller and broader than Keith has ever seen, with a round eye glowing red. He grins, displaying teeth filed to points, and lifts a gauntlet twice as thick as his arm.

“Behind you!” shouts Keith.

The woman manages half a turn before the solder strikes her down. Her aborted attack takes out half the wall in an explosion of brick and dust that throws Keith and Hunk. Only Hunk’s strength and quick thinking stops them from breaking their necks on the steps. Keith scrambles without thanks from where Hunk grabbed onto a windowsill, back to the burning furniture and beyond where there is nothing but shattered soldiers and a view of Brightwood.

“Kolivan,” says Keith. “Two things. Alfor isn’t here, and the one who was just got kidnapped.”

_“I do not know the girl but if Zarkon’s commandant took her himself, then she is who we want. This complicates matters.”_

“Not gonna comment on the floating thing, then?”

Hunk appears next to Keith. “Who are you talking to?”

“Oh, uh.” Keith gestures vaguely at his belt purse. “The guild seal lets Kolivan talk to me. In my, um, head.”

Hunk looks concerned.

_“You will need to retrieve her as soon as possible.”_

“Great,” says Keith, using his sword to laboriously create a path through the flames. “Jailbreak at Castle Fairfax, then?”

_“No. Zarkon will keep her at the Spire.”_

When Keith doesn’t speak for a long moment, sword limp in his hand, Hunk gives him a nudge. “What is it?”

Keith yanks his sword from the flames—the metal hinting at a glow—before looking at Hunk.

“Seems like we’ve gotta go save a princess from a tower.”

“You mean—? No. Can’t be. You can’t be serious.” Hunk grabs Keith by the shoulders and shouts at his belt purse. “There’s no way you expect us to willingly go into the wolves’ den, do you?!”

“Hunk has some reservations.”

_“It is not a question of whether you can or cannot, but that you must.”_

“Kolivan says no whining.”

“We’re going to die,” says Hunk mournfully.

* * *

In the ruined tower top study, they find a metal sphere—an inactive cullis gate. Keith pumps it full of will (Hunk might say he tried to melt it with fire) until it glows with a different light. The two of them touch their fingers to it and after a moment of vertigo and the world spinning around them, they appear at the top of Hero Hill.

Kolivan does not appear to meet them, nor does he respond to Keith’s inqueries aimed at the guild seal, leaving the two of them to mill about the hilltop like lost children. The wolfdog, ever whimsical about when and where she’ll bless them with her presence, trots up the winding path to the hilltop and proceeds to demand Hunk toss her a ratty ball that Keith doesn’t remember her ever having.

Around the fifth time Hunk rockets the ball into the surrounding forest, the blind seer appears before them. “I apologize for the wait. Tell me everything you saw.”

So Keith does, laying out a barebone sequence of events that Hunk occasionally elaborates on. Once finished, Kolivan’s face is as impassive as ever, but for the first time in Keith’s memory of him, he reaches to touch the end of his silver braid—as if nervous, if Keith had to guess, which is unsettling.

“My previous instructions still stand,” Kolivan says eventually.

“So how are we gonna do it?” asks Keith.

Turning to the west, toward the invisible ocean and the growing Spire, Kolivan says, “In the port town of Westcliff, there is a competition called the Crucible. The winners are said to be rewarded with employment.”

“Not gold?” wonders Hunk.

“It is a tournament befitting those entering for the thrill rather than the riches,” says Kolivan, “and Zarkon has found it an ideal candidate pool. Supposedly he hires those who win as guards for the Spire.”

Keith rests his hand on the pommel of his sword. “So we win the Crucible and get a one-way ticket to the Spire.”

“Yes. There you will need to find and extract the woman.”

“Okay, and why not just, I don’t know, kill Zarkon while we’re there?”

Milky eyes bore into Keith’s; it’s through sheer force of will that he doesn’t look away.

“You are welcome to try,” says Kolivan evenly, “but killing Zarkon will not solve all the problems he has caused.”

“It’s a good start,” mutters Keith.

Kolivan gratiously ignores him, and with his final parting words—“Head to Westcliff as soon as you are ready.”—the man vanishes in a flash of light courtesy of the cullis gate. For a long moment, the only sounds come from the wolfdog as she barrels up the path and drops the ball at Hunk’s feet, panting.

“Isn’t there anyone else that knows about the Spire?” Hunk eventually mutters. “Kolivan—no offence, but he seems like the share-when-necessary type and I’d like to skip any surprises.”

Keith mulls that over before sighing. “There’s… a possibility. Only because it’s an ancient artefact. I think. I’m guessing here.”

“You… want to ask an artefact about the Spire?” inquires Hunk slowly.

“Yeah.” Keith whistles and the wolfdog bounds to his side. “But only if you promise not to faint.”

* * *

“Hey, I brought somebody new,” Keith says by way of greeting as they push into the clearing ahead, blocked by a cliff face, ringed by prickly berry bushes and stringy horsetail.

The door comes to life with a mighty yawn that barely covers the sound of Hunk’s squeak. The stone face looks Hunk over from head to toe before beaming.

“I did not know you knew how to make new friends, my boy!” crows the door delightedly. “Where did you haul this one from?”

Keith glances at a frozen Hunk. “Somewhere down south.” He turns back to the door. “We’ve got a question for you, though.”

“And I am filled with answers. What do you ponder?”

“How old are you?” asks Keith, watching the door’s moustache quiver with amusement and then fall when he continues, “And do you know about the Spire?”

“I have long stopped counting the years,” the door says slowly, stone eyes passing between the two men and one wolfdog before it.

With a dismissive wave of his hand, Keith says, “That’s fine, but you know about the Spire?”

“I do.”

“And?”

“I do not know what it is you expect me to tell you,” it says uncomfortably—a remarkable feat for a literal cliff face, “but I can impart this upon you, my boy. Nothing is more dangerous than something capable of great evil and great good but without intent of either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” mumbles Hunk.

“I’m surrounded by riddlers,” says Keith flatly. “I just want to know if there’s a simple way of stopping it.”

“You do not stop the Spire, you stop the person wielding it.”

Keith nods sagely. “Another point for Team Kill Zarkon Immediately. Anything else?”

The door looks at him long and hard before smiling. “Do not let anyone use it.”

Keith is about to reassure him that he’s not about to let anyone destroy the world, but Hunk cuts in.

“The Spire grants any wish,” says Hunk, eyes wide, brow slightly pinched, as though struggling to maintain a calm expression and failing. “Does that include bringing someone back from the dead? Or reversing time?”

Keith stares at him; the door stares at him. Something sharp and metallic is in Keith’s nose and gums.

“Are you tempted?” asks the door.

 _Am I tempted?_ Keith asks himself.

The answer is yes, he is, so much so that his chest aches with it. He glances sidelong at Hunk and sees it on his face as well—the yearning, the heartbreak. If Keith can want something so badly to consider it for half a second, he can’t imagine what it must feel like for someone whose grief is still so raw.

The door sees it on them both. “Then you are lost.”

Before Keith has a chance to say anything, the stone face shuts its eyes and goes still. Just another carving once again.

* * *

They don’t talk about it on the walk to the lake camp, where Keith learns Rolo has left with another caravan. They continue in silence as they set out on the road to Westcliff. Keith doesn’t know where he’d start; his favourite method was always internalizing and assuming the problem goes away along with the nightmares. It still works. He hasn’t dreamt of broken stained glass towers or children in potato sacks and cellars for—well, anyway, it might have taken awhile but it worked out in the end.

Until that night, when he dreams of both, and wakes up to stars blacked out by clouds.

Hunk doesn’t ask either, but Keith doesn’t think it’s because he’s truly avoiding it. Someone like Hunk can’t avoid anything—his heart is visible whatever he does. Instead, he must be thinking, and thinking hard by the twist of his face. He’s too busy in the depths of his own darkness to think of bringing up any of Keith’s.

It makes Keith kind of grateful, in a shitty way.

The only functional one of their group seems to be the wolfdog, who shits and pisses and hunts without restriction. Must be nice.

The forest surrounding Westcliff is mostly spindly pines and steep paths zigzagging down and up and down again. Rain comes down in sheets on hard days, and slows to a sprinkle on good ones. Keith soon forgets how it feels to be dry.

The real shitty part of Westcliff before they even reach it is the fact that beasts and bandits have long since taken over. The bandits are easy—the wolfdog growls before the encampments are visible, and she takes point. Keith and Hunk follow her lead as if it’s normal to stalk when the wolfdog stalks, and attack when the wolfdog attacks. Regardless whether or not it’s normal, it works. One good thing about the rain is that it washes away the blood.

Another bad thing about the rain on the ever growing list is that it somehow hides the presence of balverines from even the wolfdog’s keen nose.

The first time Keith sees one, he thinks it’s a statue. He even points it out to Hunk.

“Wanna see if it has a hammer you can take?” Keith even manages a joke (he’ll be proud of that one for days).

Hunk takes one look at the “statue” and his face goes slack. He shifts his hammer to both hands. Keith’s sword is only half out of its sheath by the time he notices what he thought was a shaggy-backed, long-limbed, sharp-fanged gargoyle is gone from its perch on a bare stone arch.

The balverine is ten feet tall and faster than a shark in water. It sends Keith flying and nearly guts the wolfdog if not for Hunk breaking its arm with a well-timed swing. It vanishes then, leaving behind a winded Keith and terrified Hunk and super pissed off wolfdog who doesn’t stop looking at Keith as though waiting for him to keel over for the rest of the day.

Anyway, Keith is pretty sure that thing is still following them. They get attacked by other balverines occasionally—bandits are a relief in comparison—but none have broken arms.

By the time they actually make it to Westcliff after sleeping in bandit stables and fighting their way out before breakfast, Keith, Hunk and the wolfdog are haggard. One look at the village and the wolfdog turns tail for the rainy, bandit-ridden, balverine-infested forest.

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Hunk says hoarsely, “but I was hoping for an inn. A bath.”

“There’s an inn right there.” Hunk follows Keith’s drawn gaze to a ramshackle building with patched up sidings undoubtedly from the number of patrons thrown through.

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m not kidding.”

The two glare at each other for a long moment before a toothless old man waddles up to invite them into Westcliff’s best tavern.

“No thanks,” says Keith. “We’re looking for the Crucible.”

“Not yet,” whines Hunk.

“Yes yet.”

“I’m _hungry_ . You can’t say you’re not hungry. You have a human body, don’t you? Are you a balverine in disguise? Are you a shapeshifter, Keith? Are you? _Huh?”_

“Maybe you oughta take a break for ya buddy here,” advises the old man pityingly. “Crucible don’t start till the morrow anyhow.”

Hunk lifts his hammer above his head in shaky victory, nearly braining himself and Keith in the process. They stay at the inn with minimal issues. Keith only has to threaten one kid with sticky fingers, much to Hunk’s horror, and they avoid eating anything that needs to be cooked through.

After a night of well deserved rest, the morning dawns dark and rainy, almost as if time hadn’t passed at all. Hunk and Keith finds themselves on Westcliff’s singular main road, made of bare earth stomped mostly flat but for random patches of surviving marsh. Rickety boardwalks reach over the larger ones, single soggy planks for the smaller.  

At the end of this road is an intersection of sorts—left down to the docks, right to the sketchiest shooting range Keith has ever seen and is tempted to go to. Straight ahead is the shallow, uneven steps leading to what could have been a castle once upon a time. Now, its gloomy aesthetic lends itself to the Crucible.

Two men lounge at the entrance, one with a scimitar with which he’s attempting to slice a mosquito, and the other leaning on a halberd. The state of their weapons leaves a lot to be desired. No doubt the metal would crumble under a single blow from Hunk’s hammer. The odds of winning the Crucible, while already high in Keith’s humble opinion, are looking even better.

“Whatchu kids lookin’ at?” grunts Scimitar.

“You,” says Keith. Hunk nudges him sharply.

Halberd curls his lip. “Then what’s with the look, eh?”

Keith says nothing. He doesn’t even know what expression he’s wearing, but by Hunk’s, it’s probably pretty bad. Belatedly, he tries to fix it but by the scowl on Scimitar’s face and the deepening curl of Halberd’s lip, he’s failing. Hard.

“We want to join the Crucible,” says Keith in an attempt to end the interaction as quickly as possible.

“You?” scoffs Halberd. “Skinny thing. You ain’t gonna get anywhere, mouseboy.”

“Mouseboy,” Keith mouths in disbelief as Hunk claps a hand on his shoulder.

“How about you judge our talent on the battlefield?” suggests Hunk as serene as a monk if it wasn’t for the nervous sweat on his brow.

Halberd pointedly looks Keith up and down as Scimitar says to Hunk, “Ye’ve got muscles on muscles, lad. Y’might get through the first round.”

“I’ve got confidence if you’re the gatekeepers,” mutters Keith.

A little louder than intended, apparently, as both men straighten up threateningly.

“We don’ need anyone with _extra lip_ ,” enunciates Scimitar.

“Don’ need _mouseboys_ ,” spits Halberd.

“We’ll take the hammerboy.”

“Only. No rats in the Crucible!”

Miffed, Keith says, “I thought I was a mouse.”

“Let the Golden Oak’s blessed light shine upon me,” whispers Hunk frantically as Halberd and Scimitar manhandle him through the main doors, giving Keith the coldest twin shoulders he’s ever received in his life.

“Chickenshit,” says Keith.

Kolivan offers no comment, but Keith can feel the disappointment radiating off the guild seal.

The two guards reappear seconds before Keith plans on running on inside, gatekeepers be damned. They scrutinize him the same way stallowners shot him sidelong glances when he was a kid. Somehow the unimpressed suspicion bothers him more when he’s at eye level with the perpetrator.

“So,” says Keith impatiently, “where can I watch it from?”

A smile twists Halberd’s face. “A payin’ customer!”

“Paying?”

“Right this way for yer ticket,” beams Scimitar, using the flat of his blade to push Keith through the exact same doors they’d just ushered Hunk.

He lets himself be shoved along, mostly confused by the sudden change in attitude up until he’s standing at a betting counter and an old woman visibly counts up his worth by equipment alone.

“Place yer bets here,” she says with a smile that rivals Halberd’s in ineffectiveness.

Keith frowns. “I just want to watch.”

“Place yer bets here,” she repeats.

“I just—”

“Bets here.”

Her customer service could use some work. Keith sighs. “Fine, but I want to see who’s fighting.”

“Bright lad,” she hisses and leads the way to a stone window. A floor below them is a courtyard, and milling about are an assortment of battlehardy rogues who reek of blood and sweat even from where Keith stands. “Take yer pick, s’many as you like.”

Keith gazes over the crowd, searching for Hunk, when something at the edge of his vision prickles with familiarity. He blinks and lets his eyes track the movement, but it’s nothing conspicuous, just another contender. Certainly a lot smaller than one might expect when everyone else seems to be Hunk’s size or larger, but Keith knows the value of speed, and this little one—barely bigger than a kid, really—might actually give them a run for their money. Keith is tempted to place a bet. He opens his mouth to ask the woman for the contestant’s name when they turn. Poking out from under a leather skullcap are sandy-brown curls darkened by rain, and a delicate face with big eyes that makes Keith think they actually _are_ a kid. Then they’re turning away and disappearing among all the larger bodies, and Keith misses his opportunity.

“You pick yet?” asks the woman.

Keith waits a moment longer, but the tiny contestant doesn’t appear again. Instead, he spots Hunk loitering in a corner, twisting the grip of his maul and looking sick with nerves. Keith grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> birdland was on fire but now it's okay and we're back at work and steady internet will be mine again soon :D
> 
> [tumblr](http://bitterbeetle.tumblr.com)   
>  [twitter](http://twitter.com/bitterbeetle)


	6. migrations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunk faces off against the Crucible and Keith meets an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm on a roll but don't expect consistency!! ily'all!!!!

“You didn’t bet on me, did you?” asks Hunk anxiously.

The crowd roars, the sound throbbing through the stone wall into the anteroom where Keith and Hunk stand together. Other contestants are lounging in wait, sharpening weapons, drinking ale, talking to comrades, or all three. Hunk looks like he could use a drink or two.

“Ten coppers,” replies Keith, causing Hunk to groan. Keith claps him on the shoulder. “All you gotta do is win.”

“Easy for you to say,” Hunk whines. “You got yourself disqualified before it even began!”

“Believe me, I’d rather be in the ring than watching, but we don’t always get what we want.”

“Don’t act all worldly now.” The grip on Hunk’s hammer is looking grimier by the second, his constant squeezing and wringing dirtying it up far more than a week on the road with rain, beasts and bandits. “You said it yourself, I’m no fighter. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

The battles on the road prove otherwise, but Hunk _is_ parroting Keith’s own words back at him, and Keith still stands by them within context.

“You’ve got skill, Hunk.” To his incredulous stare, Keith shrugs. “Yeah, it surprised me, too. You’re not a warrior but you can still _fight_ —and you kinda have to. Otherwise we’re never gonna win and we’ll never get that woman back and we’ll never toss Zarkon off the top of his pointy death tower.”

“I thought your whole shtick was running him through with a flaming sword of doom—”

“I’m all for that, too. Point remains, Hunk, you’ve gotta do this.”

The monk deflates with resignation and inflates with determination in a single breath.

“Also,” Keith adds, “I’ve got ten copper riding on you to win, so.”

It’s a wonder he doesn’t start the bloodbath with Keith.

Hunk’s call to the arena is punctuated with a resounding groan from the crowd and the delighted warble of whichever asshat is the announcer.

“ _With that, Cudgeons is removed from the running! So close, but that last femur to the head really did it for him, eh? On to our next contestant! He may look like a monk, but his hammer says otherwise! Let’s give it up for … Hunk!”_

By then, Keith has arrived in the stands, packed with people thirsting for spilled blood as far as possible from their own bodies. The seats are uncomfortable benches worn down and stained by decades of brawls, elevated in a large oval around the arena in the pit below. As Keith watches, Hunk steps up to a square of stone, as nervous and confused as ever. A wooden wall separates him from terrain on the other side: lumps of packed dirt and gravel for hills, manmade marshland, a series of wood and stone forts connected by rickety bridges, and wild shrubbery interspersed.

“ _Our stage this week has proved difficult for many of our contestants,”_ bellows the announcer, voice amplified by something tinny and awfully effective. “ _Only two have made it past this first round, and were ultimately crushed by the second. With five rounds in total, how will our new contestant fair in the face of such terrible odds? It’s the price for glory! The price for the Champion of the Crucible! Let’s begin!”_

The wooden barrier rolls away into a slot in the arena wall, giving Hunk a first time view of the playing field. With most of the seats occupied, Keith opts for leaning against the railing, as close to the action as possible without jumping down in there himself. Nobody but Hunk occupies the field. Keith frowns and looks around, as does Hunk below. The crowd seems expectant, making side bets and gazes searching for something. Keith turns back to the field in time to see a falling wisp of blue light. He chokes back a hysterical laugh.

So that’s what the announcer meant by Cudgeons being done in by a femur.

One by one, glowing spheres sink into mounds of dirt, and clattering bones rise out of them. Hunk’s hammer sags in his grip; Keith really wants to see his expression.

“ _Our warrior monk gazes in horror at our first round! That’s right folks, as you’re all familiar with, it’s a battle of stamina as our Champion-hopeful faces off against the undying! Because they’re already dead! Hehehe!”_

The skeletons amble aimlessly for a minute before seeming to realize there’s a stranger in their territory. They all carry an assortment of weapons, but of the familiar cheap quality bandits can afford.

Hunk turns to look up into the stands, gaze searching until it lands on Keith, who sees that Hunk isn’t scared, but confused.

“If it’s a test of stamina, am I not supposed to crush them?” he calls up at Keith.

The announcer, same as the crowd, is perplexed. “ _Our monk is asking an audience member for… advice? Go on, laddy! Don’t let the bad bones getcha!”_

Keith shrugs in response to Hunk’s query. Frowning, Hunk adjusts his grip on his hammer in the time it takes the first three skeletons to make their limping beeline towards him, and with a single broad stroke destroys them all.

It appears as though the Crucible hasn’t met a man who uses the most of his hammer’s reach to avoid edged and blunt weapons, lining up opponents to maximize the dropcount with single swings. The entire ordeal is embarrassingly efficient. It’s clear the crowd expected a bloodbath, and they’re torn between disappointment and delight as Hunk makes quick work of what was supposed to be a battle of stamina.

“ _Well_ ,” says the announcer. “ _I_ _t appears our first stage has been cleared rather… effectively. Straight on to the next then!”_

Hunk steps away from the graveyard of bones to stand on the square starting point as the wooden wall slides back across. He glances up to give Keith a blank look that’s returned.

This time Keith is able to watch as a group of men and women stalk into the area, taking up strategic positions behind shrubbery and up on the forts and bridges. Ten in all, they look battlehardy and haggard even from Keith’s distance, but as the wall slides back, they grin with weapons drawn. Keith doesn’t know what situation they’re in that they’d become Crucible fodder, but they seem to be enjoying themselves.

Two have crossbows and immediately shoot at Hunk the second he’s visible. The bolts miss, barely, as Hunk moves just in time. All in all it isn’t a fair fight. Keith can see why nobody has cleared further than the second round—after an endurance battle against the undead, facing the strategic force of ten experienced fighters is, generally speaking, an instant out.

But Hunk is always one for surprises.

He makes for the closest ground fighter, removing himself as a viable target for the slow-reloading crossbows. Keith doesn’t remember teaching him that—or anything at all, for that matter. He wonders where Hunk picked it up from, up until he’s slamming his hammer against the base of one of the towers and it begins to crumble. So maybe he isn’t strategizing so much as aiming to create as much chaos as possible. Keith can understand that.

With one fort pitching sideways and forcing the fighters to scatter, Hunk catches two of them off guard with fist strikes to the head. They drop, unconscious. Probably concussed. He pauses for a moment to visibly catch his breath until a crossbow bolt shatters on the head of his hammer.

Keith learns just how much he hates battle arenas. Watching is _painful_. Everytime Hunk makes a mistake, earns himself a wound from a blunt blade or a bruise from a desperate fighter seeing the end of his squad, Keith only grips the stone separating them harder. The crowd roars and squeals and bellows with every clash of hammer and sword, fist against fist, gauntlets against noses and dirt thrown in eyes. Keith remains silent except for the heaving in his lungs that seems loudest in his own ears.

Hunk deflects a sword and kicks a fighter into the rubble of a fort; they don’t get back up. The announcer crows about the warrior monk, and all Keith can think is _that should be me down there_.

The last fighter standing looks at his comrades in various state of consciousness, alive but groaning, bleeding and bruised and yearning for a weekend. He raises his arm and concedes defeat, but the announcer won’t call the round until Hunk politely helps the poor man to the ground to the crowd’s satisfaction.

_“Phenomenal! The crowd adores him! Merciful and ruthless in equal measure!”_

The round is over, Hunk looks sick and Keith is being eaten away by envy, but the Crucible continues on.

After a brief intermission during which Keith isn’t allowed to see Hunk in the participant’s antechamber, round three begins with balverines. Two of them stand tall, gazing eerily at the crowd, while a third stalks off to hide in the dominating shrubbery. Keith’s grip on his sword is tight to the point of painful.

_“What will our aspiring Champion do with our next round of combatants?”_

The wall slides back and Hunk charges. Unfortunately the hammer is slow, and the balverines are fresh for the fight. Keith finds himself leaning over the rails along with half the audience, shouting advice that gets lost amidst the torrent of other voices.

The standing balverines are a force to be reckoned with, but the real threat is stalking around behind Hunk, haunches flexing alternately. As one, the crowd screams, _“Behind you!”_

He turns, the hammer swinging wide and catching the stalker unawares. The momentum keeps him turning even as he loses some of his force colliding with the first balverine’s head. The second and third, seeing an opening, had come in too close. Keith can almost hear the crunch as the audience rises from its collective seat with a singular roar.

Hunk, visibly gasping for breath with blood running in rivulets of sweat, stands victorious. A moment later and he’s hunched over, coughing up bile. The crowd continues to roar.

_“He’s done it! As if they’re just skeletons to be crushed, our monk has done it! And next we have?”_

The fourth stage begins immediately, before the crowd quiets, before Hunk straightens, before Keith can scream a warning.

From the far end of the arena bounds an ashy white balverine. It lopes on all fours, larger than its forebears and twice as bristled. It leaps as Hunk looks up; it descends as he turns. A claw swipes down his arm and red streams from the wound as Hunk swings, misses, tries again. Another claw down another arm, his side, his scalp. Hunk roars, the crowd roars, the balverine is silent.

It’s playing with him, Keith realizes as pale fur stains red around the beast’s claws. Hunk is a crimson fury and his hammer isn’t much better, but he can’t land a hit and the balverine doesn’t go for the kill. All the wounds it’s inflicted are shallow but plentiful. It’s a trained beast.

_“Our warrior monk is still on his feet! What a show, folks! What! A! Show!”_

Knowing he should feel sick about it, Keith watches the balverine dance around Hunk, uncaring of the smaller beasts felled at its feet. Claws glint and Hunk yells. Keith’s fingers ache around his sword.

_“He’s displaying some fine endurance, but will he hold out?”_

Swinging madly, Hunk looks deranged. His teeth are bared, spit and blood and sweat flying, muscle flexing under torn skin. It’s disgusting, humiliating. Keith doubts he even knows what he’s fighting for anymore; he doesn’t recognize him at all. Keith isn't sick yet either.

 _“Beautiful!”_ screams the announcer.

Sunken ground and the roll of a limp arm beneath the white balverine’s feet gives Hunk an opening. He doesn’t waste it. The hammer strikes solid against a femur, and the balverine loses its speed. It’s down to claws and blunt trauma then.

Blunt trauma wins.

Hunk is a spectre of war and the crowd loves him.

 _“As we’re all aware,”_ hollers the announcer gleefully, _“passing the fourth stage means the contestant is viable to join Lord Fairfax’s personal guard! Truly the beginning of a legacy! But, should the contestant wish it, they can challenge the reigning Champion for the title. What do you say, warrior monk? Join the guard and gain future riches, or fight to become the Champion of the Crucible?”_

From this distance, Keith can’t see Hunk’s expression—only red. His voice, however, carries loud and clear despite the obvious exhaustion.

“ _No!”_ bellows Hunk. “No more! I’m—I’m joining the guard!”

He whips around as the announcer offers his condolences to the crowd, _“Well that’s it for this week! Sorry to our contestants who didn’t get the chance to compete. Should you decide to wait, we all look forward to seeing what you have to bring to the arena! Especially a returning favourite like Big Boron and potential dark horses like Pidge! Until next week, folks, stay grimy!”_

Keith is already gone, dodging bodies eager to see the carnage. Hunk isn’t in the antechamber when Keith finally enters it, nor is he in the foyer. Just outside, where he’d argued with Halberd and Scimitar, Keith pauses. The audience by now has begun its trickle down the shallow steps back into town. From here, the path to the docks is visible. It’s shockingly full. Even as Keith watches, a large, triple-masted ship glides in on the tail of several humble fishing boats.

“It’s a sly thing they’re doin’,” sighs a stranger at Keith’s elbow. Haggard and thin-haired with half his teeth cracked, the old man looks like any of the other permanent inhabitants of Westcliff, except for the wistful expression with which he gazes towards the docks. “All the strongest hoppin’ onto a boat, leavin’ land and family behind. Coulda used ‘em for fightin’ or harvestin’ but nobody can blame ‘em for lookin’ to make their name elsewhere.” He sighs with longing. “What a waste the odds’ll be I’m in my grave when they finish what glorious thing they’re buildin’ out there.”

The Spire is invisible from the mainland here, dense with fog or hazy with rain as it usually is. Keith wonders what this old man pretends to see.

“You said the strongest take the boat to the Spire,” Keith says to the old man. “What do they do once they’re there?”

Eyes halfway to milky look at Keith in mild surprise at being addressed. “The winner gets a position in the lord’s personal guard. Ain’t nothin’ gonna pay for folk like ‘em than that.”

“What do the other winners say about it?”

“Say? We ain’t seen ‘em for years, lad. Nobody in their right mind would crawl back ‘ere when they’re treated like royalty in that spike. Y’know what’s good for ya an’ you’ll fight in the Crucible. Y’lose? Don’ gotta think about anythin’ anymore. Y’win and that damned spike’ll be payin’ for silks and satins.”

An image of Hunk comes to mind, twirling a crystal glass of wine and draped in tapestries, because that’s what rich folk look like. “Men like that really want silk and satin?”

“Folk want what they can throw money at, lad,” says the old man, halfway to tutting. “Ain’t you ever dream of fat beds, wine and meat, and tits to please ya?”

“Can’t say that I have,” drawls Keith.

“Then you must be a child of blood,” the man says as if he understands anything. “Men are gluttons for excess, but for some there ain’t nothin’ but the kill. You ain’t a lad born for peace. Join the Crucible and win, y’can choose to stay. Be the champion.”

“I don’t like killing,” says Keith incredulously. “I only do it ‘cause I have to.”

“Tell me, lad. How many desperate and vicious folk have you culled without question?”

“A few.”

“How many were so weak compared to yer blade that the flat could’ve knocked ‘em out for safe passage?”

“... That’s asking to be knifed in my sleep.”

“Only them who know they deserve vengeance upon them would say a thing like that. Trust me, lad, yer a child of blood. I see ‘em pass through here, pit vipers and balverines with children’s faces.”

_“It is time to leave this man.”_

Keith gazes at the old man long and hard before complying without a word. The old man tries to raise his voice after Keith, but his legs are faster than the man’s voice is loud—a muffled warning by the time Keith is through the Crucible doors and trying not to think of baby-faced balverines.

“Did you know?” Keith mutters as he walks briskly around the castle, peeking into rooms that look exactly as they had been looted a century ago.

“ _Know what exactly?_ ”

“That Hunk just bought himself a one-way ride to the Spire?” Keith practically hisses. “That we don’t _actually_ know what’s going on over there aside from the rumours these people are spreading ‘round? You really sent us here not knowing anything?”

“ _This is the only way to get to the Spire and acquire the hero of will.”_

“So you knew.”

“ _Would you have chosen not to go had I told you?”_

Keith grinds his teeth together. A dead end ahead forces him to turn and head back the way he came. “I’ve been doing whatever you say because I don’t have a choice, but Hunk is different. You can’t expect the same things of him as you do of me.”

“ _Do you doubt his resolution?”_

“I should be the one going,” Keith says instead.

“ _Yet you insulted the guards, resulting in your ban from the Crucible.”_

 _Blame yourself_ , Kolivan doesn’t say but Keith understands.

He finds Hunk barely holding it together, tucked away in a corner clutching his hammer as an anchor. He’s swathed in bandages.

“I won,” he says, “but what have I won exactly?” He lifts his head, eyes red-rimmed but dry. “Those balverines—they were covered in scars and burns. They weren’t wild. Those people were desperate by the end. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He says it as though Keith might have the answer, but his answers have always been Kolivan’s. Trying to smother a strange prickle in his stomach and cotton in his throat, Keith stretches out a hand towards Hunk, who looks at it puzzled.

“This is just another part of the plan,” says Keith.

“I’m going to the Spire,” whispers Hunk, eyes widening. “I’m going to where—I. I don’t know if I can do it.”

Keith swallows and his hand drops. “You have to.”

“Why me, though? I don’t know how to—What if Zar—What if he _knows it’s me?”_

Another swallow, stuck on the guilt—ah, that’s what it is—in Keith’s throat. “He won’t. He never saw you, and he won’t expect you to go to him. You’re just… just hired muscle, alright? Nobody’s gonna be paying any attention to you.”

“How will I know where to even start?”

“ _Give the guild seal to Hunk.”_

Keith pauses. He opens his mouth, sees Hunk watching with desperate expectation. Sighing, Keith says, “You won’t be alone.”

 _What about me?_ remains just a thought.

He grabs Hunk by both wrists and hauls him to his feet. The monk staggers before readjusting his hammer, holding it closer to his body, ever the anchor.

“ _You will wait for their return. Until then, you may do as you like so long as it in no way jeopardizes the mission.”_

It’s a strange thing, handing over the seal to a baffled Hunk who flinches with surprise and discomfort. An oddly glazed look comes over his eyes as he stares off into space, listening to the voice in his head. He says an affirmation. Yes, he’ll get used to it. No, he isn’t running away. Yes, he’s prepared to do whatever it takes. Huh. So that’s how Hunk must’ve felt when Keith had one-sided conversations.

Keith’s head feels very empty with only himself occupying it.

After awhile, Hunk’s attention switches to Keith. “I’ll probably be gone for awhile,” he says, face blank except for the tightness around his mouth. “I don’t know how long. So can you, um, take care of this?”

He holds out the hammer. Keith stares at it blankly for a long moment. The hammer hasn’t been in Hunk’s possession for even a month yet, but it’s the weapon that began his fight against Zarkon. It was once held by a statue of his family’s faith.

Keith takes it in both hands, feeling the hesitation in Hunk’s before the full weight of the hammer rests with Keith.

“How will I know when to meet you?” Keith asks.

A pause, Hunk listening, before he says, “You… you won’t.”

“Okay,” says Keith. “Okay.”

He breathes in, and out, and feels the weight of the hammer pulling him towards the earth. After a moment, Keith meets Hunk’s nervous gaze and offers a grin.

“See you after, then.”

Hunk’s answering smile is shaky. “See you after.”

* * *

Keith sees Hunk off at the docks where he steps onto a merchant vessel, half the size of the three-masted behemoth beside it but bristling with twice as many armed fellows. Aside from Hunk, the ship is packed with a shipment of supplies. Crates of food and material vanish into the hold. Just once, there’s a sound hauntingly similar to a human crying out in pain. Only once. Hunk sends Keith a fleeting look of confused alarm, but covers it up almost immediately. Despite the situation, Keith is impressed.

As the boat pulls away from the dock, Hunk stays out on deck but Keith doesn’t want to watch, so he turns away with the hammer cradled in his arms.

It’s in the middle of a boardwalk that it hits Keith: he’s alone. He halts midstep, muddy water welling up over the wood as it sinks into the marsh. For years, Keith had been on the road with other roadrats, with Rolo and the wolfdog. After that came Kolivan in his head, and Hunk shortly after.

But now, in this instant, the wolfdog is running around the woods, Hunk is on a boat with Kolivan in his head instead, and worst of all is that Keith has no idea what he’s supposed to do now.

 _Wait_ , Keith thinks. “Wait,” he says out loud.

“Oi, move it,” says an irritated woman unable to edge past him on the planks.

First order of business, Keith decides as he strides towards the town gates, is to hide the hammer. It’s too big and heavy to carry around casually, and he certainly wouldn’t trust anyone in town to keep it safe. So it comes down to stuffing it out of sight.

Hunting for a convenient spot occupies the rest of the day, but Keith doesn’t notice when day leaks into night. It always seems the same. He avoids the bandit encampments scoured messily as he and Hunk had passed, following a cliffside path for any sort of nook where a giant hammer could tuck away.

It becomes an issue of Keith realizing that he isn’t looking so much as wasting time, as though a few hours out of the first day of Hunk’s absence might make a difference. Maybe he should just keep the hammer with him. Hunk would definitely prefer that—he probably even meant for Keith to keep it on his person at all times. Unrealistic, but probable.

Keith continues to wander aimlessly, shoulders aching from the weight of the maul. The rain comes down harder. Keith is soaked to the bone, boots squelching with every step. Even the balverines are probably hiding from the downpour.

Eventually the chances of following a path off a cliff become too high for Keith to ignore and he’s forced to take shelter. Ducking under scrubby pines, Keith tries to find a place with enough layered branches to provide a canopy. He doesn’t find any among the trees, and nothing along a high ridge of rock, but he does end up frozen as part of the ridge comes alive with a yawn.

“Oh? Finally, a visitor,” it grinds out in a voice like crunching gravel. “Let me see, let me see. What do you have for me?”

Keith blinks rapidly at it. At first glance, it’s the same door as the one by Bower Lake, but the moustache is thinner, more dramatically curled, with less expressive eyebrows. Stone eyes appraise Keith, flitting over his drowned rat appearance and fixing on the hammer.

“An odd weapon for a tiny human,” it grumbles.

“It’s not mine,” Keith blurts out.

“A thief, then.”

“No, it’s my friend’s. I’m looking after it for him.”

The door’s moustache lifts mockingly. “Are you now? You look like you are running from something, child.”

“I’m not,” says Keith incredulously.

“You think you are not.” The door yawns. “You think you are clean as well, I am sure.”

Keith says nothing; he doesn’t want to think about how much grime is between his toes at that current moment.

“I am not talking about your body,” scoffs the door.

“Oh,” says Keith, unimpressed.

“Depravity is an art,” it continues, “and one you have nearly mastered. Shall I help you?”

“No thanks.”

“I shall.”

Just as Keith is preparing to threaten the door with a hammer to the nose, it closes its eyes and freezes back into stone. The seam down the center of its face widens, until both halves of the door are swinging outwards, scraping grass and an inch of dirt out of its way.

Within is the flicker of torches on a tunnel wall, and the glow of distant sunlight. Any nerves Keith might have had are overpowered by his curiosity. He steps over the threshold.

A wave of vertigo hits him much like being zapped by a cullis gate. Instead of a flash of light and appearing elsewhere, Keith’s foot lands exactly where he expects it to: on smooth stone, in a wide tunnel carved out by professionals with attention to detail. There are symbols and works of art etched into the surface that Keith can’t be bothered to look at too closely.

At the end of the tunnel is a bridge over an abyss that’s uncomfortably familiar. Through an arch is a circular room, shallow steps leading up to a low dais. The wall is made up of sequential art that Keith doesn’t look at. There isn’t any furniture strewn about the place, nor does it smell of years old smoke and must, but instead there are trees filling the room with the scent of evergreen and thunderstorms, sunlight streaming in from nowhere. It should remind Keith of Westcliff, but it doesn’t. It shouldn’t remind Keith of the guild, but it does.

In the center of a carved circle—upon which Keith decidedly does _not_ feel the tingle of magic—is a weapons rack. There is already an axe there, along with a two-handed claymore, a halberd shaped like a ram’s horn, a bow carved from something white and silky to the touch. Every weapon is beautiful and deadly. Keith brushes calloused fingers over the hilt of a short sword, the head of the hammer dragging behind him.

The sound of stone on stone brings him back to himself. There’s no hammer as part of this collection, but there is, suspiciously, space enough for it between a pike and a trident. Keith places it there, feeling ten times lighter the moment its weight no longer depends on his arms to lift it.

 _Safe_ , he decides.

He turns to go, but the short sword gives him pause. The pommel is flat-bottomed and plain, but untarnished—Keith can see his reflection in it, warped by the unnaturally smooth curve leading to the hilt. The workmanship is unbelievable. Without meaning to, Keith’s hand is already wrapping over fine leather, lifting the blade free from the weapons rack. He gives it an experimental swing—perfectly balanced. Sunlight glints off the blade as if turned to liquid.

It’s plain, unmarked, unbranded; it’s perfect. Keith practically trembles with want.

When he leaves the chamber, the demon door seals behind him with the scraping of stone. It opens its eyes on Keith’s back as he marches out of the trees.

“Someone like you would never be able to deny yourself such a gift,” says the door.

Keith tightens the red scarf more firmly around polished metal and does not reply.

* * *

That Westcliff is a boring place full of excitement is something Keith decides by the end of his first week there. The Crucible comes and goes, and Keith forces himself not to watch or participate. He keeps the coin he’d won to pay for lodging until it runs out, then takes on odd jobs to keep his room. People are thrown through the inn wall, and he fixes it; firewood is dwindling so he chops it; a brawl breaks out down at the docks and he breaks it up. People start to recognize him, making it easier to find work when his reputation precedes him.

But every day is another day with no word from Hunk or Kolivan, another day with the wolfdog only appearing to him as a shadow in the drizzle, another day with nothing.

Until a month later, when the wolfdog comes trotting into town as if she hadn’t been avoiding it. A caravan rolls in behind her, and at its head is a woman with hair and skin so pale she looks like a phantom in the gloom.

Keith carelessly drops the planks he’d been forcing back onto the inn’s wall, a wide grin splitting his face.

“Do mine eyes deceive me?” says Nyma as she leaps down into the mud.

Laughing, Keith sweeps her up into a hug that she returns with equal enthusiasm. She’s taller than when she’d left—taller even than Keith, and deceptively strong despite her willowy appearance. He helps her find somewhere appropriate near the docks for the covered wagons and leaves them surrounded by half a dozen rough-looking men with swords and axes, and one wolfdog sprawled out underneath.

“You’ve been doing well for yourself, then?” asks Keith as the two of them walk along the docks in Westcliff’s fine drizzle.

Nyma smiles coyly. “The coast might be dangerous when it comes to pirates and cliff bandits and balverines, but it’s the most rewarding if you come prepared. Haven’t you gotten any of my letters?”

“Not recently.” Keith thinks back to Bower Lake and snorts. “Rolo wanted me to tell you that your letters suck.”

“Bah, he’s always expecting romantic poetry. What a twat. He’s not here with you?”

Keith grins. “He went off again. North, I think.”

Something softens in Nyma’s expression and she turns her face away, but Keith sees the smile there.

Once she has her wistfulness under wraps, Nyma looks back at him and says teasingly, “I’ll admit seeing that mutt of yours coming out of the mist gave me a right heart attack.”

“She’s been known to do that.”

“Took the lead and everything. Thought she woulda bit my horse’s leg off if I didn’t intend to roll into Westcliff.”

“So pushy.”

“I’d say.” Nyma’s gaze turns sharp. “Any reason for her to be?”

Keith shrugs, keeping his eyes on one of the larger ships in port, flagless with sails grey as the drizzle around them. “She was just excited to see you.”

“And for me to see you.”

“For which I’m grateful.”

“You sure you’re okay, Keith?”

Instead of answering, Keith’s gaze slides away from the ship to the tavern on the docks. A slender arm loops through Keith’s.

“Let’s get a drink,” says Nyma as she pulls Keith towards the tavern.

“I haven’t been in here before,” Keith admits as they step inside. It’s grungy, as expected, but in a sturdier way than the wrecked inn by the gates. This one has seen all kinds of folk, and has proof of it in the decor hanging like trophies from beams crisscrossing above their heads.

“Best grog you’ll find this side of the continent,” says Nyma once they’ve stepped up to the bar. A squat glass of hot spiced rum appears before Nyma, and for Keith a bubbling amber ale with an inch of white froth oozing over the lip. “You keeping outta trouble?”

“I guess,” says Keith as he takes a sip of his ale—surprisingly refreshing. “I just do small jobs here and there.”

Nyma looks at him oddly. “What’s got you stuck in Westcliff?”

“I…” Keith snaps his mouth shut. There really isn’t anything keeping him here. It could be another month until something happens at the Spire, but there’s no guarantee even then. He could be back in Bower Lake, relaxing and hovering around Kolivan. He could join another caravan like Rolo, earn money guarding like he’d done for all those years. He could be doing something instead of becoming just another wretch of Westcliff. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not like you.”

Keith shrugs. “I’ll figure it out.”

“You sure? This ain’t the best place for idle thoughts.”

“S’not like I’m gonna drink myself silly.”

“I’m saying you’d better watch yourself here,” Nyma warns with a casual flick of a hand over her shoulder. “Westcliff is neutral territory—or as neutral as it gets. Most of those ships in the port are pirates’. Don’t accept a drink from those ones, they’ve been known to trade in humans.”

Keith follows her gesture to the sprawl of patrons at the bar. It’s easy to tell who is part of the ship life—everything they own is pale with ocean salt and water damaged, from the leather of their high boots to the kerchiefs wrapped around necks and biceps. Not to mention they seem like a loose and languid folk, occupying space with the inarguable confidence of the tides. Keith sees danger in their belt knives and cutlasses, and the twin pistols at the hip of one particularly swarthy fellow smirking at the barmaid.

Halfway through turning back to his ale, Keith freezes. He looks over his shoulder once more. Recognition comes slowly, like forcing his boots through mud. That hair, longer and swept away from a widow’s peak, stiff with salt; the grin, lopsided and cockier than before; his eyes, even from this distance, Keith knows they’re blue. Still blue.

With a single look, Keith is a kid running through cobbled streets and climbing graveyard walls and breaking into cellars.

Beside him, Nyma leans into his field of view. “Keith?”

“What?” Keith blinks at her, struggling to focus when every nerve in his body is pulling him through the muscle memory of a time long past.

“You okay?” She arches an eyebrow, looking over her shoulder at the bar then back at Keith, clearly puzzled and leaning towards caution. “Any trouble?”

“Wha—no, no trouble.” His voice cracks; he swallows hard. “None at all. I just… Could you—? I’ve got—Um.”

“Keith, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he insists. Something in his face is twitching, and before he knows it there’s a smile tugging at his mouth that he can’t stifle. Nyma’s expression switches from wary to alarmed. “I’ve just gotta go say hi to a, uh, an old friend.”

“And I’m not an old friend?” asks Nyma incredulously. _You have other friends?_ is unspoken but clear. Keith isn’t offended; he even laughs, though it comes off as a scoff. Still, Nyma is perturbed.

Keith slides from his seat before Nyma can say anymore. He steps over sprawling legs and boots angled to trip until he reaches the bar. This side of the tavern smells strongly of the sea, of sweat and sun and citrus. There’s no room for him, but Keith puts his hand down on the counter, to draw the attention of the barmaid (now staring and flushing a deeper red) and the pirate on the wrong side of Keith’s arm (only briefly annoyed until he realizes his ale hasn’t been obstructed) and the gunman (obviously exasperated by the barmaid’s shifting focus, until he himself turns to look).

Surprised eyes—they _are_ still the same blue—flick over Keith’s face, his hair, a quick jump up and down his body. Then his mouth pulls into a sly grin meant for barmaids and Keith is torn between disappointment and the desire to laugh.

For the first time in his life, Keith wishes he was better with words, with clever jokes and pick up lines, if just for this one moment to tease someone he hasn’t seen for the better part of a decade who doesn’t recognize him yet.

But he’s been told he’s sharp as thistles with the social grace of a headless chicken, so instead of trying for wit, Keith says, “Hey Lance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heh.
> 
> that chapter total is gonna change but i don't know by how many so imma just keep it like this for now c:
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://bitterbeetle.tumblr.com)  
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/bitterbeetle)


	7. eagle eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Lance catch up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back from the mountains not that i told y'all I was going anywhere :D saw a bald eagle nest which was ADORABLe even when they were tearing apart.....something. what a good mama.

Sun-faded beads sway at the end of a short braid as Lance’s head jerks in a second, focused sweep over Keith. Dark blue eyes take in Keith’s patchwork clothes, layered in the style of the caravan, how scarcely stitched leather serves as his only well-worn armor, and the red scarf tied around his sword.

He’s the definition of a roadrat, while Lance is the definition of a swashbuckler—loose shirt with billowing sleeves and deep cut neckline, showing off a dark expanse of freckled and scarred skin, tucked into pants held up by a belt studded with what might be bits of shell. His wrists, neck and ears are all adorned with something that used to be sparkly but now lay tarnished by the sea and wind. This only accentuates the gaudiness of him.

The entire image is one of wicked mischief.

A hand resting casually on one pistol, Lance eyes him suspiciously. “Do I know you?”

“You should,” says Keith, drawing back as his gaze drops to the twin pistols, and a vague flicker of a memory brings a grin to Keith’s face. “So you did become a gunslinger.”

The beads twitch again as Lance scrutinizes him a third time, eyes widening, brow pinching. All at once, his expression goes curiously blank as he meets Keith’s gaze, and Keith sees him mouth what must be his name.

“You know this guy, Lance?” asks the pirate behind Keith with too much interest. Eyes are turning on them steadily, piercing gazes under heavy lids. Keith leans his wrist against the guard of his sword, turning halfway towards the pirate behind him, eyeing the level of beer in his glass and the glaze of his eyes.

An arm falls across Keith’s shoulders and the smell of lime and seaweed is stronger than anything else. “I might,” Lance says smoothly, “but I think I’d like to get reacquainted.”

The gazes of his fellows fall away with their laughter. Confused, Keith allows himself to be steered away from the catcalls and snickers as Lance leads him outside. There’s a certain swagger to Lance that seems oddly calculated but which Keith doesn’t question until they’re around the back of the tavern with all the empty crates, at which point Lance turns on him. The swagger, the smirk, the slyness—all of it drops away to be replaced with a giddily beaming kid.

“Holy shit!” Lance claps his hands over his mouth. His eyes are practically popping out of his head, staring at Keith, taking him in. A disbelieving laugh splutters free of his hands. “Holy _shit_ ,” he says again. “ _Keith?_ ”

His excitement is infectious, and Keith has already been fizzling with the shock of recognition. He answers with a broad grin.

“S’been awhile, gunslinger,” Keith says, and it’s just the right side of teasing that Keith is especially proud of himself when Lance laughs.

Lime fills Keith’s nose again as Lance flings his arms around him in a haphazard embrace. Keith is saved from figuring out how to respond when Lance pushes him away at arm’s length, laughs again, brings him back in, out, slaps at his shoulders excitedly.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” Lance says for the third time.

Fingers dig into Keith’s shoulders as Lance seems to settle for staring at him in something like awe. From this close, and out of the gloomier lighting of the tavern, Keith can see the wrinkles around Lance’s eyes and how chapped his skin is, the underlying redness of a sunburn that’ll never really go away. Under his bottom lip is a tiny silver scar, and across his cheekbone is another, and visible upon a second glance is the small gap between eyelashes that’ll never grow back, skipping over his eyelid to hide beneath one dark brow.

“You look like you’ve been roughing it,” says Lance.

“As if you’ve room to talk,” retorts Keith at once. “Have you heard of dodging?”

After a puzzled moment, Lance’s hand jumps to a scar following the muscle of his neck. He grins. “I’d like to see you try dodging flying debris on a wet deck in the middle of a storm. Besides, scars are proof of a life well lived.”

“I guess we’ve both done pretty well for ourselves then.”

“I guess so.” Lance’s other hand slides from Keith’s shoulder down to his elbow, no longer gripping but just brushing the leather and cloth with his fingertips. “What’ve you been up to?”

The question, more appropriate for a friend after being away for a few months, nearly makes Keith laugh. There’s nowhere for Keith to even begin—the endless adventures on the road with Rolo, fighting alongside the wolfdog, everything about Kolivan up until his most recent travels with Hunk. There’s too much to say, to describe with words Keith was never really good with in the first place. So instead of answering, he asks a question of his own.

“What about you?” Keith brings his hand up to catch Lance’s elbow, their forearms brushing as he says with fading excitement, “You disappeared.”

Lance’s smile falters, just barely. It remains, however, as though used to sticking in lieu of any other expression even as Lance’s gaze slides over Keith’s shoulder.

“Ah,” he says, drawing out the sound. “You know. Things happen.”

“Like what?” pushes Keith.

That Lance’s smile is wretched is something Keith learns when he turns it on him, pitying and deprecating. “You really wanna know?”

His hand begins to slide away, until Keith catches him by the wrist, pressing tarnished beads into his skin. Lance blinks down at the hand wrapped around his bracelets.

“I’d like to know you,” Keith says quietly. “If that’s alright.”

“Your hands are rough,” Lance blurts out.

They both go still, Keith confused and Lance embarrassed. The sounds of the tavern are louder than the gulls swarming the docks, the brush of a hull against pillars, the flutter of flags in the wind.

After a long moment, Keith says, “Ah, yeah. From swordwork.”

“Right,” says Lance quickly. “Yeah. Me too.”

“You wield a sword?”

“No! I mean, callouses. From, uh, ropes.”

“Oh.” A longer pause, after which Keith realizes he’s still holding onto Lance’s wrist and quickly lets go. “I do wanna know. About you, I mean, and what happened.”

Lance’s permanent smile grows tight; his gaze flicks back to the tavern. Keith tries not to be disappointed.

“You don’t have to,” he forces himself to say. Personal boundaries, he can respect that.

“What?” Lance’s focus snaps back to him. “No! I want to tell you! I just— Can we go somewhere else?”

Taken aback by Lance’s sudden enthusiasm, Keith nods. A warm hand finds Keith’s, rough as promised, leading him further from the tavern instead of back around to the front. It doesn’t escape Keith’s notice, as they’re forced to clamber over piles of rope and more empty crates, that Lance is very purposefully avoiding any windows and doors. They probably would have been able to slink away too, if not for Nyma.

She always had an uncanny knack for sensing something was afoot, Keith thinks as Nyma appears around the corner with her hands planted on her hips. “Um, what in all hells are you doing?”

Keith feels Lance’s reaction before he sees his free hand going for a gun. He yanks back hard, pulling Lance off balance with a confused yelp as Keith steps forward.

“Nyma!” he says quickly. “Hey!

“Keith, hey,” she mimics, eyes fixed on Lance suspiciously. “Didn’t know you had pirate friends.”

Whatever story Keith is prepared to tell dies on his tongue when Nyma’s gaze drops to their linked hands. Her eyebrows skyrocket, followed by the corners of her lips into an impish smirk.

“My, my,” she says slyly. “Our little Keith certainly is growing up. Planning to elope without even saying goodbye?”

In the split second it takes for Keith’s brain to derail and his plan to trash all her letter paper and ink to form, Lance tucks Keith into his side and seals their fate. Their bodies flush, Keith watches in horror as Nyma’s eyes blow wide in vicious delight.

“A little rude of you to interrupt,” says Lance smoothly, definitely under the impression he’s saving them any embarrassment and also being absolutely wrong. “We have a lot to catch up on. I’d like to see what is as I remember it.”

Harmless, if not for the silken voice with which Lance chooses to say it.

“Th-that’s not— He doesn’t mean like— Not that—” stammers Keith.

Impossibly, Nyma’s smirk grows even more terrifying. “It’s okay, honey.” Oh, it’s gotten even worse. “I promise, I’ll only tell Rolo. I’d prefer to do it in person just to see his face—jealousy, you know. He looks absolutely striking with it.”

Lance’s languid pose stiffens against Keith. “Oh, I didn’t— Sorry!”

He leaps away, hands up in apology, looking between Nyma and Keith uneasily. All of Keith’s blood has relocated to his face. This change in demeanor delights Nyma even further, and she folds her hands over her heart as she gazes at Lance adoringly.

“I’m so sorry,” she says sincerely. “I’m only teasing.”

Lance’s hands droop in midair. “What?”

“Keith and Rolo aren’t a thing,” says Nyma, “or not that I know of.” She raises her eyebrows suggestively at Keith. “Unless you wanted to join us.”

“Nyma,” heaves Keith, suddenly well and truly exhausted.

Laughter lilts her voice as Nyma sing-songs, “Only teasing! Besides,” She looks back at Lance, who stands there uncomfortably, “I know Keith isn’t the type to run off for a romp. He’s too oblivious. And awkward.”

“ _Nyma._ ”

“But I’ve also never seen him holding hands, so I’d _love_ to hear more about _you_.” Nyma slides up into Lance’s personal space, forcing him to lean back slightly as she looms over him. Her smile is frightening. “If you hurt him, I will come for you.”

“Nyma!” snaps Keith, sliding an arm between them and pushing her back. “He’s just an old friend. We wanted to catch up— _not like that_. We knew each other as kids.” He jerks his thumb at Lance and his perma-smile. “He’s the one I was visiting in Bowerstone on the weekends.”

All at once, Nyma goes from protective and ravenously curious to friendly and open. “Oh? Really? You never did say where you ran off to. Is this true?”

“Yes,” says Lance immediately, stiff under Nyma’s deceptively affable scrutiny. “I lived on the hill, between the market and the cemetery.”

“How nice,” says Nyma musingly. She slides back a step from them. “In that case, reminisce away. And Keith—” She shoots him a look, “—don’t you dare go anywhere without seeing me again, got it?”

“I’m not a lost child.”

“I mean it, I’ll send out a search party—”

“Okay, okay! I got it!” Keith flaps his hands impatiently at her. “I’ll see you later.”

“Good.” With one last smile and a little wave for Lance, Nyma whirls around and drifts back into the fog rolling in off the water.

There’s barely a beat of silence before Lance is saying, with open admiration, “So, she’s... terrifying.”

Keith grimaces. “She isn’t usually like that. C’mon.”

He leads away from the tavern until Lance bounds up beside him. A light touch to his elbow turns him away from the path, further from the docks to the side of the cove where land meets the sea gently. He doesn’t reach for Keith’s hand again. They stop at a cluster of driftwood overgrown by long grass. Lance sits down on a bone white log with a huff, stretching his legs out and dragging his heels through wet pebbles.

“So, that woman. Nyma, was it? She part of your caravan?”

“Yeah.” Keith sits down on the other end of the log, moving his sword sheath out of the way. “Her family would set up in the marketplace every weekend. I came with them to see you, till you…”

“Got kidnapped,” says Lance with a nod. “Sorry about that.”

Keith does his best not to scoff, but Lance’s airy attitude about his own kidnapping is offputting at best. “What happened?”

Lance shrugs and makes a dismissive gesture that causes his beads to clink. “I went down to explore the docks. I don’t remember much of the details, but someone distracted me and another jumped me from behind. When I woke up in the hold, we were already at sea.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to… Ah, what was his name… Max? No. Matt. What happened to him?”

Lance cocks his head. “Matt? As in Katie’s brother Matt?”

“Yeah. Disappeared ‘round the same time as you.”

“Oh.” Lance frowns. “I… don’t remember ever seeing him.”

“Oh.”

“Different ship, I guess.”

“That’s shitty.”

“Yeah.”

They fall into silence, water lapping at the stony shore. The sounds of the tavern are muffled beneath the thickening fog, obscuring the ships and their furled sails. Sea-polished stones shift under Lance’s feet as he drags them back and forth.

“So you woke up in the hold,” Keith says after a minute of watching the ships vanish. “What then?”

Lance hums thoughtfully. “There were a bunch of other people holed up there, but none of them wanted to fight back. I made a lot of trouble. The crew got so fed up they just put shackles on me and threw me in a cell. They’d been using it as storage—guess they didn’t think they’d be stuffing a kid in there—so I got hold of a chisel. Used it to chip off bits of crate like picks.”

He grins, holding his wrists together in mimicry of being bound.

“Got outta the cuffs, and the cell, though the door was a bit harder. In the middle of the night I made a break for it—I don’t know what I was planning on doing. Chucking myself into the sea and swimming back, I guess. I didn’t think anyone was gonna be awake, but there always is. So I was hauled up in front of the captain, who was right pissed about being woken up, and they dragged me down to the cell to see how I’d gotten out. Guess I impressed ‘em, ‘cause they kept me on instead of selling me with the rest.”

At the end of his story, Lance claps his hands before giving them a cheerful shake. Keith blinks slowly. Leaning forward, he braces his palms on his knees.

“You’re telling me,” says Keith, enunciating carefully, “that you picked two locks on a pirate ship with a chisel and wood, and the captain, instead of tossing you into the ocean, hired you on?”

“Sure did.”

“Of course,” and then Keith bursts out laughing, hunched over his knees to snort at the pebbled ground. “Y’know,” he says breathlessly, between short snickers, “I think I missed you.”

“Hey! I should hope so!”

But Lance is smiling, eyes crinkled with glee as Keith struggles to pull himself back together. Once he’s managed it, he waves at Lance to continue.

“Okay, so you joined the crew,” says Keith. “Where’d you go after?”

Lance folds his arms across his chest, nose wrinkling in thought. “Gods, it’s been awhile. Uh, the others got sold off at this tiny island two days’ good sailing offshore, and then we went down to Bloodstone, and further south to this port town I can’t for the life of me pronounce…”

“Hold that thought,” interrupts Keith. “After being on that ship, I mean, where’d you go?”

“Go?” Lance arches an eyebrow. “I didn’t go anywhere. Well, I _did_. Loads of places.”

“Wait, what do you mean you didn’t go anywhere?”

With a cock of his head, Lance says, “I’m still part of the same crew. I never left.”

“You’ve been…” Chilly disbelief drapes over Keith like a thin blanket. “For _years_ , with the same people who enslaved you? They were gonna sell you, Lance.”

He shrugs. “I’m not the only member of the crew who started off like that. I was just the youngest. It’s not unusual, Keith.”

“But, your family,” says Keith incredulously, suddenly forced to drop the image he had of Lance, sailing back to Bowerstone after escaping the crew—because of course he would have. There’s no other option. “Don’t they know you’re okay?”

“No.”

“Lance.”

“Don’t harp on me, Keith,” says Lance, smile slipping into something annoyed. “I did what I had to do to survive. I was just a kid!”

“You’re not a kid anymore. What’s your excuse now?”

Lance reels back as if Keith took a swipe at him. Scowling, he snaps, “I don’t have one. I don’t need one. I just— I don’t know!” His scowl falters as his gaze drops to his hands. “I don’t know, okay? It’s been so long, and I’m— for the love of— I’m a _pirate_ , Keith, not their little boy! I can’t just leave the ship.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I owe them my life and I serve my sentence under the grey sail. That’s just how it goes.”

Seeing him dragging his heels through the stones, bitten by the sea and sun and embracing it, Keith understands: Lance is a man grown. No matter how he started out as a pirate, he’s spent his life on that ship. Just as Keith can’t imagine living without a sword on his hip, should it be any different for Lance, whose legs probably despise solid earth after life on a tilting deck?

That doesn’t make Keith any less disgusted. “Don’t you owe your parents, too?”

“It’s better for them this way.”

Keith thinks of potato sack children and cellars. “It’s not.”

Silence descends heavy on them like the fog obscuring port. Lance looks at Keith, expression inscrutable, before heaving a dramatic sigh. With a flourish of limbs and pebbles, he rises to his feet. Keith watches him blankly as he stretches.

“Great talk,” says Lance, planting his hands on his hips and grinning. A pinky rests on his holster. “I’m gonna head out now, though.”

Another beat of silence as Keith’s brain scrambles to understand. “You’re leaving?”

“Yeah, I need a break from…” Lance waves a hand vaguely, “...this.”

“But I didn’t—” Keith almost leaps to his feet in his haste, but desperation tastes sour at the back of his throat. He pulls back, fixing his expression back into something neutral, something calm—anything lacking the mess of emotions he can’t begin figuring out how to speak through.

Lance’s gaze slides away from his face to the hidden port, and those awful grey sails. His smile twitches.

“We’re… not setting sail for another couple days,” Lance begins slowly, and Keith hates the way his stomach swoops. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Right?”

With not a single thought to spare for the work he promised to complete tomorrow, Keith nods. “Right.”

* * *

Over breakfast, Nyma tries to grill him about his pirate friend, but Keith refuses to budge. What he does know isn’t something he thinks he should share, and even if he did, he knows Nyma would probably try to force him to cut ties.

And what ties they have are so few that Keith doesn’t want to risk any of them.

Just to escape her interrogation, Keith skips out early with excuses of work to do. Instead of finishing up his repairs of the inn, however, Keith takes to the shore. The morning sun has tried and failed to burn away the early mist, which blurs the border between sea and sky. Still, it’s thinner than usual, with the daily drizzle on hold. Standing where the water just laps at his boots, Keith thinks he might see the Spire, but it isn’t anything solid he can focus on. Just a shadow of a thought, maybe.

Somewhere in that imagined tower in the mist is his friend. The most anxious friend Keith has ever had, alone in the enemy’s den, and worse still being forced to sneak around to break out a stranger from a stronghold they don’t know anything about. Again—alone.

Keith grips his sword hilt, squeezes and releases it. _Wait_ , Kolivan said.

By the time Keith turns away from the shore, the sun is just hot enough to start clearing the mist, only for the usual drizzle to roll in. It’s colder than Keith thinks it ought to be. People are already dressing for the upcoming autumn in wool sweaters beneath their oiled coats. Out of sheer spite, Keith refuses to bundle up quite yet. When he sees red leaves—not that there are any, surrounded by evergreens—or snow, then he’ll consider dressing for the occasion.

The inn’s wall is fixed by mid afternoon. Keith checks to make sure it isn’t leaking, throws a few chairs to test its sturdiness, and then exits the inn with his room secured for another couple weeks and the promise of one (questionably) hot meal a day.

“H-hey now, little beastie. I can promise you I’m not tasty!”

Keith perks at the voice, uncertain as it sounds. He walks the length of the deck, stepping off into the mud below to take the corner to the inn’s backside. Standing with his back to the woodshed is Lance; facing him, head lowered and prowling closer, is the wolfdog.

“I’d be chewy as fish jerky,” Lance is blabbering, palms out and wearing a heavy knit vest over his thin shirt. “With the bone still in it. Dangerous for the throat, I’m telling you. A choking hazard! You wouldn’t want to take a try— _Keith!_ Oh thank the gods. I don’t want to shoot a dog but I’m starting to wonder whether this _is_ a dog—”

Stifling a laugh, Keith whistles for the wolfdog to join him. She perks up immediately and bounces around to accept his affection—a thwap to the rump and a reminder to mind her manners.

“Oh, it’s yours then?” asks Lance breezily.

“A good friend,” says Keith, grinning. “She was just curious.”

“About what?” Lance pats down his clothes as if hunting for forgotten snacks.

Keith shrugs. “Maybe she just hasn’t met a dashing gunslinger before.”

Hands at his pockets, Lance goes very still, before saying, “That was shockingly smooth, roadrat, I’ll give you that.”

“No idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course not.”

“What are you doing lurking ‘round here anyway?”

“Oh, that.” Lance waves a hand far more flippant than his tone.  “I just— I was wondering if I could…” The rest is an indiscernible mumble.

“What was that?”

“I said…” Lance huffs. “I wondered if I could talk to you without that friend of yours seeing me.”

“Who, Nyma? Why?”

Lance shoots him a look of utter contempt. “I saw her by the docks earlier when I was coming off the boat. _Staring_ at me. After all that last night, you’d better make sure she’s not… planning something.”

“Like what?” asks Keith, amused.

“Something!”

“Here I thought you thought she was cool.”

“Oh, she is,” says Lance bluntly, “and _terrifying_. Like your… dog.”

The wolfdog’s tongue lolls out as Keith reaches to scratch her cheek. “You’re right about that.”

“Anyway! Before I was cornered by your furry friend,” Lance says, pushing away from the shed, “I was wondering if you wanted to join me for a round of betting?”

“Betting,” repeats Keith flatly. “I’ve got no spare coin to burn on a deck of cards. That doesn’t speak for my skill, of course. I’m just saying. Empty pockets.”

“Right, yeah, yeah,” says Lance skeptically. “Tons of skill, I’m sure. What I meant was if you wanted to pop over to the Crucible.”

Having squelched their way out of the thick mud astride the inn, to stand dirtying the already filthy patio, Keith raises his eyebrows at Lance. The wolfdog busily scrubs herself against a fresh post Keith installed last week.

“You really enjoy watching that kind of thing?” Keith asks.

Lance shrugs. “Not usually. I’d heard the Crucible is something special.”

“Oh, it is, alright,” mutters Keith.

“Although, if I’m being honest, I _am_ tempted to join.”

Blood-wild bandits and scarred balverines immediately burst to the forefront of Keith’s mind, now supplied with an image of a grown Lance with twin pistols, running out of ammo and—

He gives himself a shake and tries to pass it off as a shiver when Lance stares.

“It’s not really worth it,” Keith attempts halfheartedly.

“Oh?” Lance folds his arms, tugging aside damp fabric from his chest. Keith very determinedly squints at where the wolfdog now stares at passersby, unnerving each and every one and sending a couple skittering a distance.

Lance leans forward into Keith’s field of view. “And why’s that?”

“It’s just a dick measuring contest,” he says with forced cheek. “Them that win almost every round go off on a boat to act guard for Zarkon in his tower. Them that _do_ win every round sit on a pedestal and wait for someone to knock ‘em off it. They change the arena terrain sometimes, and the opponents. Maybe walking skeletons, or balverines, or something else. At night you can hear the crowd screaming for blood even from down here. People come wandering in from every corner of the continent looking for a fight and they get it and don’t always come out the same person. It’s foolish. I hate it.”

“You love it.”

Ice water douses Keith from crown to tailbone, though he’s only as damp as what drizzle could sink through his clothes. Blue eyes stare at him, unrepentant as the half smirk curving lips not nearly as chapped as they’d been the day previous. Keith’s gut twists. It’s not altogether unpleasant, even with the frost trickling down his spine.

“I don’t,” he says.

“You do,” says Lance. He leans in closer, his usual citrus overpowered by the Westcliff mud that permeates everything. “Wanna know how I can tell?”

“No.”

“‘Cause you look all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed talkin’ ‘bout it. That sword on your hip—you grabbed it when you started and you haven’t let go. You act like it’s beneath you, but I’ll bet my guns you’d be down there in a heartbeat slicing at skeletons and balverines.”

“You don’t even know me,” Keith says too sharply, jerking his hand away from his sword. He feels like a hypocrite as soon as he says it.

A soft huff of a laugh and Lance pulls away, eyes averted. Suddenly it’s a whole lot easier to breathe.

“Maybe, but I’m right, aren’t I?”

Admitting would feel like losing, so Keith refuses to directly respond. Instead, he says, “Anyway, I’m banned from participating.”

Whatever tension had existed between them dissolves at once.

“What for?” asks Lance eagerly.

Already Lance’s mouth is twitching, which makes Keith feel redundant when he says, “Apparently I offended the fine employees at the door.”

Positively delighted, Lance throws his head back and laughs. “I love it!” he crows, loud enough to draw the attention of the wolfdog, who eyes them both as she might pesky children.

“Okay, so Crucible aside,” Lance says once his giggles have petered out. “Anything else to do ‘round here?”

Which is how they end up at the range, watching what looks like the bottom of the Crucible’s barrel trying to show off their sharpshooting skills in the thinning drizzle. There are four targets distanced from each other by increments of twenty-five meters, and a fifth sitting at two hundred. Keith expects the last one’s there to give the better eagle eyes something to be humble about.

A large hand comes down on Keith’s shoulder and all he smells is fish and oil as the fishmonger says, “Didn’ know ye could shoot! Oh, hells, that’s a big mutt.”

“I’m passable at most weapons,” Keith says as he tries to subtly remove himself from the fishmonger’s hand, “but I prefer close range.”

“Boo,” says Lance.

After tearing his eyes from the wolfdog, the fishmonger claps Keith twice, hard, on his back. “Test yer skill! The lads are having a competition.”

“How about a lass?” comes Nyma’s deceptively silken voice.

Along with two of her caravan guards, Nyma approaches the unofficial bookkeeper with half a handful of coppers. The fishmonger laughs in a way that would only offend Nyma. Keith sees the way her eyes turn to flint, and wisely steps back with a grip on Lance’s elbow to do the same. Only the wolfdog seems to adore the danger, tail wagging and tongue flopping as she prances around Nyma taking up position at the line.

“Go on,” says Nyma flippantly. “Place your bets. Will I or won’t I hit the target of your choice in five shots?”

“Show us your weapon, then,” says one of the men who fiddles with the string of his shortbow. Half a dozen others nod their agreement.

Nyma makes a show of patting her clothes before beckoning at Keith.

“As if you don’t have your own,” Keith mutters even as he picks a small bundle of braided twine free from his belt.

“Thank you,” Nyma says sweetly before unravelling the twine. With a flourish, she twirls it beside a cocked hip—a pinch of leather looped through either end with ropes of twine. “This’ll do nicely as my weapon of choice.”

“A slingshot?” Lance raises his eyebrows and casts a glance towards the targets, even as the other men burst into guffaws.

Coins start clinking in the bookkeeper’s pouch, who looks bored with the whole ordeal and keeps counting the money instead of watching.

“She won’t hit twenty-five,” says the shortbow archer.

“She’ll miss twenty-five but hit fifty on the lip,” says a gunner, whose friends laugh at his folly.

“Miss twenty-five!”

“Hit twenty-five on the edge.”

“Seventy-five bullseye.” All heads turn to Lance, including a startled Keith and Nyma with a slowly morphing expression from surprise to interest. With a shrug and a grin, Lance dribbles far too many coins into the proffered pouch. “She wouldn’t be confident for nothing, no?”

The fishmonger shakes his head mirthfully. “She wouldn’ be the first to bite off more’n she can chew ‘cause of a slight.”

“Will you not place a bet?” asks Nyma, all smiles.

“How ‘bout this, little lass, ye hit the eye four times in a row, any target, and I’ll give ye a crate of salted fish fer tradin’.”

Nyma looks towards her two guards, as stoic as Keith would expect of anyone fit to travel with the glib-tongued northerner for most of the year.

“It’ll have to sit beneath the dried goods, y’hear?” she says.

“Aye,” chorus the pair.

“Excellent.” Nyma turns to shoo the wolfdog back before taking up position, feet shoulder width apart and sturdy, one forward of the other. “Not gonna bet on me, Keith?”

“Thanks, I’ll pass,” he says flatly. “You’ll be wanting stones as well?”

“Oh no, thank you, I have my own.”

“Of course you do,” mutters Keith.

From her belt purse Nyma slides out a round stone, smaller than an egg. She pinches it in the leather scrap and, holding the ends of the twine, begins to spin it around her body in a figure eight. The fine rain stops, as if following the audience’s lead and holding its breath. Eyes fixed on the twenty-five meter target, wrist turning with the sling, Nyma releases the string not looped around her index finger.

The stone dents the middle ring of the wooden target. Lance whistles low and Keith grins. Of course she would consider a miss just a hair outside the bulls-eye.

A second stone fits into the sling and up and around it goes. Everyone is quiet until the moment she releases the string and stone thunks hard against wood. The paint of the twenty-five’s center target is visibly concave. Someone—the fishmonger, perhaps—clears his throat awkwardly.

Nyma doesn’t make a show out of the last three. She walks with the sling spinning beside her until she’s in line with the fifty-meter. Release, thud. Twice, she hits it, before moving on to nail the seventy-five. Lance’s laughter is giddy. Though she doesn’t need to, Nyma fits a sixth stone into her sling, cocks a smile at those gathered, and whips a fresh bulls-eye on the hundred meter target.

“In case you thought I couldn’t,” she says cheerfully.

She sashays over to the bookkeeper to accept her reward as the wolfdog races to and fro delivering round stones to their owner. The fishmonger keeps shooting looks at the other men as if for reassurance.

“So,” Lance turns to look at Keith, eagerness plain as day. “You any good with that sling?”

Before Keith can respond, Nyma is there, jingling her winnings beneath Keith’s nose. “Oh, he’s quite good. Not as good as he is with a sword, but our Keith doesn’t walk around with weapons he can’t use.”

Keith doesn’t deign her with any sort of reaction—or so he hopes—even as she plants a kiss on his cheek that he fights not to cringe away from.

“As thanks for letting me borrow your sling,” she says coyly, grabbing his hand and curling his fingers around the twine and leather. “I’ll be heading out early tomorrow morning. We’ll say our farewells tonight, yes?”

The urge to scrub his cheek is especially strong now, as Nyma waits for his response while grinning over his shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Keith, waving her off and bundling the sling back up. “I’ll come see you.”

“Excellent. Grog is on me.” With another rattle of her plump purse, Nyma twirls around to approach the fishmonger much like a prowling mountain lion.

Once she’s dragged away the fishmonger, the wolfdog trotting along behind as though enjoying the show, Keith looks back at Lance. Even while the other men stand around counting their meager sums and scowling at the targets, Lance’s eyes are fixed on the small group headed down to the docks.

“It’s my turn,” Lance says abruptly.

Keith blinks at him. “You’re gonna shoot?”

“Yeah.” Lance fixes him with a stare far too intense for the occasion, but which feels like standing on the edge of a precipice nonetheless. “Watch me.”

Keith doesn’t know what else to do but nod.

“No need for bets,” Lance announces loftily as he steps up to the line opposite the twenty-five.

“Lad,” says the gunner tiredly. “If ye can’t hit the target with yer guns at this range, what’ll be the point of even showing off?”

Lance’s answering grin is seven shades of wicked. He pulls a pistol from his hip holster, cocks it and takes aim. Everyone is expecting a blast, as gunpowder pistols are inclined to do, unruly kickback and all. Instead, it sounds like a sharp crack, loud but half as startling. Four cracks follow in quick succession. Keith blinks, uncertain as to where to look except for the line of Lance’s arm to the tip of his pistol—pointing not at the twenty-five target, but…

“Holy oak,” splutters the gunner. “Lad hit—no, can’t be.”

“All five,” finishes the bowman, unable to tear his gaze from the target two hundred meters away, rings barely visible and even less so the minute hole in the center.

With a flourish, Lance holsters the pistol. Bright eyes turn on Keith, who says the first thing that comes to mind. “Incredible. Waste of bullets, though.”

Lance laughs so hard he clutches his belly, though Keith doesn’t see what’s so funny. All he knows is that Lance’s laughter is precious as the tears it’s brought to his eyes.

Once the bulls-eyes are confirmed, Lance becomes something of an icon to all sharpshooters present, young and old. They make a game of it, handing him their weapons and seeing if he can nail the bulls-eye. He misses the first shot and nails the second, consistently enough that Keith suspects he’s doing it on purpose. He can see the way Lance’s eye follows the length of arrow, bolt and barrel; the pause of his breath, steadiness of his hand, the smirk that slides away when the target is locked.

Even the old, crooked rifle the bookkeeper brings out takes only an extra miss for Lance to hit center on the third shot.

By the time they’ve run out of weapons to test him on, Lance’s vest is lying sodden on a fence and his thin shirt is clinging to his arms and back with sweat, his permanently windblown hair trying to fall against his slick brow. When he turns to look back at the swordsman, Keith knows it’s foolish to deny that Lance is anything less than handsome, but he knows as well that everything else dims in the light of his brilliant smile.

Keith is viciously glad neither Nyma nor Rolo is there to rag on him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that chapter total is the biggest lie i've ever told if i keep pulling this shyte :3c
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://bitterbeetle.tumblr.com)  
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/bitterbeetle)


	8. passage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith learns something disturbing, and Lance refuses to leave him alone.

The rain remains suspended when Keith leaves Lance at the range to join Nyma in the tavern. The wolfdog is sprawled outside in a puddle as if early summer has come again—something Keith can definitively deny. 

Seated at the bar, Nyma chooses to greet Keith with, “How was your date?”

“It wasn’t,” deadpans Keith as he takes the vacated seat beside her, “and he’s a better marksman than you.”

That gets Nyma to shut up for all of three seconds. Her brow might furrow but her mouth keeps moving. “Well. That’s just great, isn’t it?” Her voice says it isn’t. “I guess you’re into that sort of thing.”

“When was I ever into you?” deadpans Keith.

Her jaw drops. Just as Keith expects her to punt him in the teeth, she bursts out laughing. A hand descends on his shoulder with more force than necessary. 

“I’ll let you have that one,” she says humbly, “since I’m in a fantastic mood to start.”

“That crate you took off the fishmonger’s hands high quality, then?”

A deceptively dainty hand summons the barkeep for a glass of grog that Nyma plunks down in front of Keith. 

“The one I chose? Quite.” She sighs happily, swirling the contents of her glass around. “He tried to pass off a suboptimal catch by putting a layer of good fish on top. As if I’d be leading my own wagons unable to tell when I’m being duped.”

“Your folks’ll be proud.”

“Prouder when I upgrade my merchandise.”

“Go too far up and you’ll be leaving all us common folk behind for gold and jewels.”

“When I’m living it up in greed and gluttony, I’ll be sure to commission a painting of you so I remember my roots.”

Keith snorts. The idea of himself featured in strong-smelling pigmented oils, glaring out from marble walls, tickles something fierce. A statue would be so much cooler.

“Best news is that I immediately found a buyer,” says Nyma happily. “A merchant ship heading out to some tower bought up everything they could get their hands on. I could hear the hull groaning.” She takes a hearty swig of her drink and sighs. “Lucky, too. Word is a bad storm’s brewing. This might be the last ship out for awhile.”

A prickle of something like anxiety begins in the pit of Keith’s stomach. Drowning it in rum doesn’t seem like a bright idea but Keith makes the attempt anyway. 

“This weather is getting kinda ridiculous,” Keith says, trying to distract himself. “Summer’s barely ended. Nobody should be wearing wool yet.”

Nyma scoffs an incredulous laugh. “What’re you saying? It’s nearly winter. Of course it’s cold.”

“What?”

“What?” Nyma echoes, giving him an odd look. “How long have you been here that you’ve already lost track of time? That’s not like you.”

“No, I…” Keith trails off, blinking at his drink. 

“Are you okay, Keith?”

The end of autumn is a season’s worth of days that Keith doesn’t recall. The sky is always overcast—he’d never noticed the days growing shorter, or the tilt of the constellations differing. For certain, Keith knew he’d spent a month in Westcliff, from the time Hunk left to the present day. He’d heard the temptations of the Crucible four times; he’d seen the boat leave to the Spire as many. 

The only time he’d left Westcliff for any length of time was to…

“I’ll see you later, Nyma,” Keith says, his voice sounding faint to his own ears. He doesn’t listen to her question or answer it, he doesn’t call the wolfdog to his side, and he doesn’t hear his name being called.

A month spent in Westcliff, and three lost. Four months total. Four months of stagnating while Hunk does who knows what in Zarkon’s Spire. 

The ground is soft beneath Keith’s feet as he hightails it out of Westcliff. Raindrops seem to hang in midair, striking his face as he runs towards the cliffside path. He takes a corner too sharply and nearly skids off the edge. Heart already pounding, the brush with open air spurs him to scramble on, fingers digging in the mud as he hauls himself to his feet. 

“Oi, Keith!”

A glance to the side—soaked wool, loose sleeves clinging to brown skin and beads dangling on the end of a rain-blackened braid. Keith doesn’t know what he says—if he says anything at all—to cause the concerned furrow in Lance’s brow, but he doesn’t linger, running on until he’s past a cluster of scrubby pines in front of a ridge.

Keith doesn’t register Lance stumbling to a stop behind him. Before them, the cliff face yawns to life. It looks quite boredly at Keith even as he draws his sword and uselessly levels it at its stone nose.

“You stole time from me,” spits Keith.

“I took nothing from you,” says the door placidly.

“Liar! I’m a season behind everyone else! What in all hells did you do?”

The door arches its eyebrows impressively. “ _I_ did nothing. _You_ stepped over my threshold. _You_ made a trade. _You_ passed through with it—and now you level this gift at my own face? Truly, you deserve it.”

Keith chokes on his next words, too enraged. Ignoring his silence and the sword, Lance inches forward to stare at the face, whose eyes grind in their sockets to appraise him.

“Sea gods bless me,” Lance breathes in awe. “A real demon door. I’ve only read the stories—that each one contains something different. What’s—can I ask? What’s inside?”

“Oh, another one,” hums the door. “Would you like to have a look?”

Something sharp and hot lances through Keith’s veins as he drops his sword and yanks the pirate back in the same motion. The blade bounces harmlessly in the sodden grass, but Lance stares in shock at Keith, who has nearly thrown him into a tree.

“That thing,” Keith snarls, “stole my time for his stupid gifts. They’re not worth it.”

“So says the child who has not yet tried out that which he exchanged for.”

“Shut up!”

Lance holds his hands out placatingly but doesn’t attempt to approach. “Look, Keith, buddy. I don’t really know what’s going on, but you can’t fight a demon door.”

“Like hell I can’t.” Keith scoops up the sword.

The demon door sighs deeply. “You may certainly try to break me, but then my contents will be unattainable for all eternity.”

“I’m sure Hunk’ll forgive me,” says Keith, and raises the sword.

The blade shimmers like mercury as it falls. With a shout—”Stop!”—Lance is there, tackling Keith to the ground. The sword slices clean through a young pine, toppling it into the demon door’s unimpressed face, before coming to a rest embedded hilt deep in the mud and grass. Keith himself spits out greenery and the taste of earth, but Lance is a heavy weight keeping his shoulder in the muck.

“Lance, what the fuck are you doing?!”

“You’re losing your shit, roadrat,” Lance heaves. “Whatever’s got you twisted over a few months of time, should you be wasting what you’ve got on a talking rock? No offence.”

This last sentiment is aimed at the demon door, which wrinkles its nose to shift the pine free from where it leans against its face. 

Keith twists, shouldering Lance off to land in the mud himself. Staggering to his feet, Keith goes to lift the sword from the ground with a loud squelch. Lance looks apprehensively at him, forced smile looking odd with nerves, until Keith gives the blade a shake and dislodges all the mud free like it had never touched it in the first place. The sword returns to its sheath.

“Once the winter storms hit, nobody will be getting in or out,” says Keith. “This is my last chance. I’m getting on that boat. I’m going to the Spire.”

There’s a pause, then Lance says, “It’s already left.”

“Wh—” Keith spins and skids dangerously down the ridge to the cliffside path. The sea crashes into the cliff far below, but in the north Keith finds the mouth of the port and the silhouette of a merchant vessel gliding free. “No. No no no. Shit. _Shit.”_

“It was weighing anchor when you took off—hey! Keith!”

But Keith is already flying back the way they’d come, towards Westcliff and the port, uncaring how he was going to get to the boat in time. He’d swim if he had to. There was no more waiting.

* * *

The wolfdog’s ears are perked when Keith runs past the tavern, alive with the sound of tipsy merrymaking. He skids to a stop, spraying puddle water everywhere, dropping to a knee before the confused mutt. Sinking his fingers into her thick fur, Keith presses his forehead to hers.

“I’m so sorry,” he says with what breath he has left. “I left you alone for so long and didn’t notice.”

The wolfdog whines and Keith leans back to look into eyes watching him with far too much intelligence to soothe his guilt.

“But I have to leave again.”

Deep within her throat, the wolfdog strains with an aborted whine. Keith’s heart aches; he doesn’t wonder what she does and does not understand. It’s obvious in her eyes.

“I promise,” he says, gripping her fur more firmly, “that I’ll be back. I won’t vanish on you again. For now, go back to the camp—to Bower Lake. Do you understand?”

His fingers uncurl from her scruff. The wolfdog looks at him steadily as he stands, and doesn’t make a sound. Keith doesn’t know whether he expected her to nod, but the way she blinks is acknowledgement enough when she breaks eye contact with him, before looking aside at where Lance pants heavily having just caught up.

The wolfdog doesn’t look at Keith again. Wheeling around, she bounds away from the docks, into the grey haze of town. Within seconds she’s gone. 

“I’m so confused,” Lance begins to say, but Keith ignores him and strides onto the docks.

The merchant vessel is still visible—barely, or perhaps not at all, just a smudge of his imagination. He has to believe it’s still close enough that he can get to it. Keith nearly throws himself into the water after the boat, much to the baffled amusement of the fishermen and other dock regulars. Only Lance’s firm grip on both of his arms stops him from diving into the frigid black water. 

“Hold on there, roadrat,” says Lance in what ought to be a soothing voice but just comes across as entirely sarcastic. “I don’t care how good of a swimmer you are, you’re not gonna make it. But I can.”

That gives Keith pause from trying to fling himself into the sea. “How? Hijack your own ship?”

“No, jackass,” scoffs Lance. “I’m gonna hijack a boat _off_ the ship.”

Keith twists around to stare at Lance, forcing him to let go of his arms in the process. “Are you serious?”

“Are _you?_ ” Lance pinches the bridge of his nose. “You can’t swim faster than we can row together, and how are you planning on boarding it? You gonna grab the keel and ride along the whole way? Ask for a leg up?”

Embarrassment is a curdling addition to Keith’s prickly anxiety. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”

“Obviously. Follow me.”

The ship looms above them as if uncertain whether or not it’s part of the fog. Murky grey sails, tied up at the yard, seem invisible in the gloom. It must be a terrifying thing to behold: a ghost of a pirate ship sliding out of nowhere on foggy days, bristling with guns and grins.

Lance bounds up the gangplank, leaving Keith to mill about awkwardly at its base. The pirate’s voice is cheerful as he speaks to an unseen stranger on deck. “Takin’ it easy?” 

“Not’n yer life,” grunts the crewman. “Ezor ‘ould have my head if sum’n got nicked my watch.”

“Sounds like you’ve already been into the rum, though.”

The other man cackles. “Migh’ s’well clear space in th’ hold, eh?”

“Speaking of, quartermaster wants count on flour ‘n meat. Can you grab that while I check the anchor line?”

“Though’ we already r’placed tha’ thin’.”

Lance snorts. “I’m the one that bought the rope last time. Ezor’ll have _my_ head for being cheap if it frays.”

There’s a burst of laughter followed by the thud of boots fading below deck. A moment later, Lance’s head appears over the rail with a beckoning hand. Keith creeps up the gangplank on silent feet to join Lance on deck.

Lance leads the way up the steps to the back of the ship. There they find a boat with two benches, and some inches of water sloshing about the bottom as it dangles over open water. Lance chooses to ignore this detail as he sets to work unhooking a line of sturdy rope from the twin pulleys to which the boat is attached.

“That’s the tiniest lifeboat I’ve ever seen,” Keith says, struggling to see how it could carry the entire crew should the ship sink.

“That’s ‘cause it ain’t,” Lance grunts as he frees the rope. “It’s a jolly boat. Not meant for more’n six at a time, max. Grab this and lower with me.” 

The boat descends quickly as they steadily feed rope through the pulleys. When the line goes slack, Lance grabs Keith’s and loops it in a figure eight around a stud in the deck. Using the same rope, the two lower themselves down into the boat below. Lance thrusts two oars at Keith before reaching around him to release the boat from the ship.

Almost immediately the ocean tries to shoulder them into the butt of the ship, but some quick and forceful paddling courtesy of Lance saves them. Keith can’t help but admire the confidence in which Lance maneuvers the boat, and by extension Keith himself, uncertain with an oar in either hand until Lance positions him just so. 

“Match me,” Lance orders, and Keith obliges. 

Facing the port, Keith watches their slow journey put more hazy grey between them. Already his arms have developed a whisper of an ache, unused to this kind of repetitive workout. So concentrated on pulling the oars against the resistant water, it takes Keith some time before realizing how much colder it is over the open water, and also that he has no idea where the merchant ship is.

He twists in his seat to get a look, earning a boot in the hip from Lance, who sits behind him.

“Don’t stop rowing,” says Lance.

Trying not to scowl, Keith resumes. “How are we gonna know where the ship is?”

“Just relax and enjoy the ride.”

“We’re gonna end up smashed against a cliff,” deadpans Keith to the mist.

“Seriously, relax, I can see it.”

“That’s the biggest load of chickenshit I’ve ever heard.”

“Just… trust me a little, alright?”

Keith wants to tell him to stuff it, but he has little choice in the matter. By getting into this little boat with Lance in the first place, Keith effectively put his life into his hands as well. Keith searches for the unease. There’s the anxiety, ever present but faded now that he’s acting, and his body’s rejection of the chill seeping in with the moisture through Keith’s layers, but there’s no suspicion or nervousness. Realizing the lack of mistrust is more uncomfortable than if he found any at all. 

Every breath is visible now, a fine layer of frost encroaching on the brackets holding the oars in place. The boat bobs up and down on steadily rolling waves. Everything sounds muffled. Keith listens for Lance’s oars dipping into the water and tries to keep the same pace.

“Almost,” Lance murmurs. 

Despite his aching muscles, Keith rows on. He doesn’t know how long they do it for, only that it’s too long but not long enough. The cold has long since leeched the feeling from his bare hands, the damp any comfort from his clothes, the motion his calm gut. 

“Almost,” Lance says again.

It’s been an hour. Two hours. Longer? Keith doesn’t remember. He can’t remember what warmth feels like, and when he tries his tempo with the oars breaks and they lose speed. The port has long since vanished. His boots, sturdy and oiled, have given up protecting his feet. The water in the bottom of the boat is thin but cold as slush. Keith’s very blood is chilled. So caught up in his own failing, Keith forgets that Lance is wearing already soaked wool behind him, but there is no sound of chattering teeth. Just the steady dip into water, and the flash of a paddle in Keith’s periphery.

“Keith.”

He stops paddling to turn, but his body is as stiff as the rest of him and he pitches sideways. Only Lance’s arm, lunging forward to brace him, keeps Keith from toppling into the water.

“Easy there,” says Lance through purple lips. 

Keith wants to comment but can’t find his voice. A large shadow is looming out of the mist—the merchant vessel. Turning his body forward, Keith returns to paddling with Lance. The smooth hull of the ship moves into Keith’s periphery, marked by the bulky captain’s quarters, a line of portholes, and slowly but surely, the curve of an anchor hanging flush at the ship’s bow.

“Row hard for a minute,” orders Lance.

They do so, pulling ahead of the slowly moving ship.

“Wind is low, they won’t move fast.” Shivering hands free Keith’s of his oars—he hadn’t even realized he couldn’t let go on his own. If not for the lack of circulation, Keith might think Lance’s breath is hot against his ear. “I’ll keep us steady, you grab onto the anchor and climb. Use the tackle block to reach that first porthole and get inside. Got it?”

“Sh-sh-sh-sure.”

“You’re worrying me, roadrat.”

Keith gives him a flat look to which Lance replies with an unsteady grin. The ship is coming up on them now, the bow slicing through the water slow and easy. Lance grabs onto the oars, shifting them at odd angles in the water to prevent them being flushed away from the bulk of the ship. Keith rises to his feet, inhales deeply and holds, recalling the warmth of the midsummer sun, of a campfire roaring too close, the tightness of his face against the heat and the delighted curl of his toes. Focusing is difficult; the burn of the air against his face is relentless and all encompassing, but failure isn’t an option. Failure means falling into the ocean.

The contrasting temperature is a fresh kind of pain that binds Keith’s focus to a single point. Feeling comes rushing back to his extremities in a wash of pin and needles; steam sloughs off his body to join the thick fog. The anchor is close enough now, only within reach to one bold enough to jump.

Keith leaps the distance, feeling the little boat dip to one side beneath his foot. His hands make contact with the anchor and sizzle. The frigid metal burns in a way that saps the strength from Keith’s grip, but he’s nothing if not stubborn. Hand over hand, he forces himself to climb from metal to rope, silencing himself from the pain of the anchor’s weight pinching his hand between rope and hull. 

It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know what a tackle block is—the only thing within reach is a bunch of pulley systems pulled taught where their rope is tied to the mast. Keith grabs on and shuffles until his feet are close enough to a porthole that he can feel for the ledge with his toes. Maneuvering inside is no easy feat, but he manages it with a foot hooked under the upper lip and a hand whose fingers are ready to break from their death grip on a pulley. 

Once inside, Keith finds himself crouched between a cannon and an empty hammock. A quick peek over the gun shows several hammocks occupied and swaying gently with the slow bob of the boat, the motion punctuated with snores like clockwork. Easy. Keith can handle sneaking by those to… somewhere to hide.

Keith turns to the porthole intending to signal Lance, to share some sort of goodbye, but he freezes.

“ _What are you doing?”_ Keith hisses at the pirate oozing over the porthole edge.

Lithe limbs tuck themselves against his body as Lance crouches nearly flush with the cannon. A sheepish frown pinches his brow.

“I just—” begins Lance, only to be interrupted by a loud snort. They both freeze until the offender resumes snoring. Once the alarm drains from his expression, Lance grimaces at Keith and mutters, “I didn’t think. I just suddenly…”

Keith’s hands itch to throttle him. “Suddenly _what?_ Lost all sense?”

“ _No_ , I— Damn it all. I felt like I’d never see you again!”

His mouth snaps shut, casting his gaze to the floorboards. The strain of his voice, hushed as it was, goes unnoticed by the crewmen. Keith blinks slowly at Lance. The warmth he’d summoned seems to be leaking out of him with every breath. Accompanied by the chill is an odd sense of relief and gratitude, and fear.

“You have no idea what you just signed up for,” says Keith even as his voice feels like it trembles in his throat. 

The part of him tense as a taut wire wants to throw Lance out through the porthole and hope he lands in the boat; another part, just as potent as the first, urges him to slump against Lance and let him carry the burden instead. Either way, Keith’s hands twitch as though to reach out for the pirate. 

Lance’s brow sets with determination. “You’re right. Not a clue. But whatever it is, I’m on your side.”

For a moment, steam obscures Keith’s vision, before the vapor is whisked away by a pocket of sea air. 

“How can you _say_ that?” asks Keith faintly.

“Easily.”

Steadfast blue eyes hold Keith’s gaze. Shit, he means it. This is ridiculous.

Something is very wrong with him, Keith decides—both himself and Lance. Nobody would go this far for a stranger, to the point of essentially declaring his loyalty. Nobody would throw themselves into the dangerous unknown simply because they had a hunch. It should make Keith uneasy, not set him ablaze with… with… _something_. 

“Your crew,” Keith begins as a last ditch effort.

“Will be pissed,” says Lance with a grin, “and I don’t care.”

 _Ridiculous_ , repeats Keith’s inner monologue helpfully. 

Boots thunk heavily above deck, reminding Keith that they’re very much stowaways. If they’re caught, being tossed overboard is the least of their worries. Zarkon cannot know he’s there—or alive in general.

Lance’s voice is in his ear, murmuring, “This way,” as his hand wraps around Keith’s wrist. With a beckoning tug, he rises from his crouch, pulling Keith up with him. Nobody rouses from their sleep as Lance leads Keith between rows of hammocks and cannons, past a long drum studded with spokes and wrapped in the anchor rope.

“This is more like a warship than a merchant’s,” mutters Lance under his breath. 

Suddenly he halts. Keith jerks back to avoid bumping into him. The boat creaks around them, Lance’s head cocked, blinking eyes that gaze at nothing in particular. Keith frowns, opens his mouth to ask, but Lance holds up a hand.

“You hear that?” murmurs Lance.

Keith blinks once, then mimics the tilt of Lance’s head. Wood groans against wood, the drum of boots overhead, taut rope rubbing on winches and pulleys. 

“Hear what?” asks Keith.

Another long pause; Keith glances over his shoulder at the hammocks, half obscured by the girth of the main mast.

“Just my imagination,” Lance says, but his voice and the tightness of his grip on Keith’s wrist say otherwise. Keith frowns until Lance notices, and keeps frowning until he says uneasily, “It stinks, too.”

Keith inhales experimentally. The ship certainly does reek, but of fish and seaweed and the pungence of alcohol—all scents Keith expects. “Like what?”

Heavy footfalls on a ladder interrupt their conversation. A sharp smacking sound, followed by a loud groan, announce the forced awakening of one of the crewmen. The mast is hiding them from sight for now, but should someone come wandering down towards the stern…

Lance practically drags Keith to a set of steps that disappear down the base of the mizzenmast. Blackness swallows them up as they descend. There are no portholes here to leak natural light. Keith twists his wrist from Lance’s hold, feeling his fingers tense until Keith grips them properly. Rough and calloused, as promised.

Despite the lack of light, Lance moves forward. Keith is helpless to do anything but allow himself to be led. He wrinkles his nose. A thump and a curse from Lance ahead, the gentle tug of his hand leading Keith around a crate. It takes Keith a moment to notice he’s able to see outlines—the edges of cargo and Lance’s salt-stiff hair. 

He’s straining so hard to see anything else that Keith doesn’t fully comprehend the smell until his throat goes dry. He hacks out a cough. It’s a heavy musk, pungent and sour. Keith gags. He knows this smell—he’s never experienced it before in this magnitude, but he knows. 

“Shit,” murmurs Lance. The responding cough is neither his nor Keith’s.

The sharp tang of sweat and urine mingle over the fetid reek of shit and bile. As recognition dawns on Keith—what it is he’s smelling, what he’s hearing—his sight seems to attune itself. 

People—hooded eyes glittering in the gloom like animals, pressed shoulder to shoulder with wrists and ankles bound. Some stare at the newcomers, most do not. They’re prisoners on a merchant ship, hidden away in the hold beside supplies bound for the Spire. 

“Amazing,” Lance says softly, “the kind of shit that goes on right under your nose.”

None of the prisoners speak a word. Keith wonders why and just as quickly decides he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t realize his grip has tightened painfully until Lance grunts a protest and tries to flex his fingers. Hastily Keith lets go, but his eyes remain fixed on the scene before him. 

“This is… this is wrong,” says Keith, coughing when the acrid stench floods his throat.

“Everything is horrifying the first time you see it,” replies Lance rather too dismissively.

“This is different.”

Lance’s eyes glitter the same as the livestock before them. “You remember the first person you killed?”

“Of course I do.” He’d won fights using weapons before, but they were never lethal. They were never meant to be—drunkards and fools with misplaced confidence. A warning is all it was until that wasn’t enough.

“How ‘bout the seventh?”

Keith doesn’t respond. He remembers the second—blond, crooked nose, chipped front tooth—as well as the third—a scar through the lip and a lazy eye—because they’d happened the same day as the first. The caravan leader had called them bandits, but at the time Keith just saw starving and desperate farmers. They turned out to be the same thing, in the end.

But the next time his blade had whipped past a sloppy guard, Keith wasn’t paying attention to who was on the receiving end of the blow rather than how quickly he could get it done.

“First leaves a mark,” says Lance coolly. “Second might, third might, but they get fainter. This is more of the same.”

When Keith looks at Lance, the impassive gleam of his eyes fixed on Keith even in the gloom, he is reminded of old men and rock faces telling him just how easily violence comes to him.

“I don’t want to get used to it.”

Lance just shakes his head at that, like Keith is some naïve kid. It pisses him off.

“I’m not gonna leave them like that,” he says harshly.

“Neither am I.”

Keith opens his mouth to continue arguing but pauses. 

“You’re... helpin’ us?” rasps someone from the pile. 

Lance casts a sidelong grin at the prisoners as though they can see him properly. “Someone level-headed is getting a knife to free yourselves. Just don’t move till the ship stops.” 

More pairs of eyes lift to fix on the shadowed forms of Keith and Lance, unseeing but attentive nonetheless. Keith watches as Lance takes a flat blade from his boot and uses it to saw through the bonds of a teen with bright watchful eyes. He presses the handle into the teen’s hands.

“Quickly, before they dock,” says Lance, and the teen gets to work. To Keith, he says, “Back upstairs, we shouldn’t stick around.”

Bemused, Keith allows himself once again to be led between stacked cargo to the staircase. Lance pokes his head over the edge of the gundeck, peering around before ducking back down. _Thud, thud, thud_. Ten seconds, Lance takes another peek, then they’re ghosting across the deck as the crew’s activity thunders above them.

“Preparing to dock,” Lance murmurs as he impatiently pushes Keith into a nook hidden from the corridor by the overlap of a cannon and slack hammock. 

Both are silent, overtly aware of their own breathing despite the ambient noise being enough to cover it. Keith stiffens as several crewmen jog by, but they don’t even glance in his direction, too preoccupied with turning the drum to drop anchor. The lighting has changed, dimmer than before. Keith doesn’t need Lance’s hushed commentary in his ear to know they’re inside the Spire. 

It sounds like the entire crew is milling about above deck. Convenient, though Keith wonders about the human cargo and how long until they burst from their bonds. Hopefully not until he and Lance are well away from the ship. The last thing he needs is to get caught up fighting within the first five minutes of arrival.

“I thought you were gonna ignore them,” admits Keith in the silence following a crewmen rolling out of his hammock to totter above deck. “The folks down below, I mean.”

Lance snorts. “And pass up a great distraction?”

That draws Keith up short. “You saved them just for a distraction?”

“Look, roadrat.” He sounds oddly fond, as though indulging him. “I’ve been there. I know what’s waiting for them. We didn’t save anybody, just handed them an opportunity to save themselves.”

Maybe he was a balverine with a child’s face.

“Then I’ll give them another opportunity,” Keith decides as heavy footfalls signal a change in the movement of crewmen above them. Before Lance can stop him, he rises from their hiding spot and strides to the drum coiled with the length of rope that remains after dropping anchor. 

“What’re you planning on doing?” hisses Lance at his elbow, shooting looks at the open space around them that could sprout crewmen at any moment.

Keith doesn’t have many worries now that they’re no longer in the middle of the ocean. “Setting a fire,” he says as he wraps his fingers around the taut rope.

“It’s soaked through,” Lance is saying, but Keith ignores him.

He thinks about heat and humidity, and the sensation of stepping out from under a wet canopy into the blazing sun. Steam curls off the surface of the rope as it heats from the core outward. Fibres char beneath Keith’s hand, a glimmer of sparks eating away at loose threads, until flames burst from between his fingers. Keith releases the rope as fire spreads along its length.

“You know, I’ve been wondering,” says Lance as they hurry to the porthole furthest from the dock, “but are you… magic?”

“Am I—?” Keith coughs to hide his splutter. Pausing at their escape exit, Keith summons a layer of fire to flicker over his palm. Lance’s eyes bulge out as Keith says, “You mean this?”

“Yeah. Yes. That.”

Lance moves a hand to touch it, but Keith clenches his fist and extinguishes the flames. “I’m a little magical, I guess.”

“You’re like… the heroes from those stories,” says Lance in little more than a whisper, eyes wide and mouth twitching like it doesn’t know which way to curve. 

Keith huffs a laugh. “You’ve no idea.”

“What does that mean? Hey. Keith. Wait, what does that—”

No amount of mystically summoned warmth can withstand plunging through the ocean’s surface. Cold grips him viciously. Limbs seizing, Keith gasps and chokes on water. The automatic response of his body to thrash is what saves him in the end, arms windmilling and thrusting him back to a world of air. Lungs burning, strength failing, Keith feels the ocean’s depths dragging him back under. Vaguely he registers the sound of a splash nearby. Shortly after the surface swells around his shoulders as his body is pulled through the water.

“Hold on, magic boy,” Lance wheezes in Keith’s ear. One arm is hooked around Keith’s chest, the other paddling in long, confident strokes.

Blunt sensation against his feet alerts a very numb Keith to rock bottom. In an effort to stand, he kicks out his legs weakly, only managing to tangle with Lance and send him spluttering beneath the surface. 

Snorting water from his nose, Lance snaps, “Cut that out!”

“S’ry,” slurs Keith apologetically. 

Only when the rocks are dragging at his knees and Lance is lifting him bodily out of the water does Keith attempt standing again. Gravity seems to have other ideas, however. He sags into Lance’s side, teeth chattering in his skull and his body nearly convulsing in an effort to keep up.

Somehow, and Keith might remember to ask him about it later, Lance drags the both of them up over piled black boulders, slick by the ocean spray. Lance is muttering under his breath about something or other, too low for Keith to hear or comprehend in his current state.

The sound of the ocean sloshing against rock and tower grows muffled. Lance has brought them to a sort of alcove amongst the boulders, where he lets Keith slump to the uneven floor.

“You’ve got the fire thingy, yeah?”

Keith tries, he really does, but the cold is so all encompassing—penetrating deep to layers of flesh he didn’t know he could even feel—that it rattles his teeth and his brain and turns his memories to mush. 

“C-c-can’t.”

“For a hero, you’ve got the self preservation skills of a lemming.” Lance’s wool vest is gone, probably discarded before diving. For whatever reason, his shirt follows, and then he’s peeling at Keith’s clothes.

“Wha’s th-this? Y-you s-s-seducin’ me?”

Lance’s responding laugh borders on hysterical. Hands are pushing and pulling at Keith, rolling him over, folding his arms over his belly, and then there’s Lance’s own arms wrapping around and holding him back to chest. Confusion is as rampant as the bone-deep cold.

“L-L-L—”

“Hush,” mutters Lance into his ear. “Keep trying your magic.”

Obediently and in spite of his confusion, Keith keeps trying. It’s difficult with his thoughts as slippery as ice. His head is aching from the constant shivering, but he’s heard somewhere that shivering is a good thing, that it means his body is still trying to warm itself up. 

 _And failing_ , Keith thinks bitterly.

But there’s sensation coming back to him slowly. It’s in the shuddering breath ghosting over his ear, where foreign skin is pressed to his, and tense muscles in the arms around him. Despite his calm, Lance is just as cold.

What was once blurred and slippery sharpens into focus. 

There are a lot of places Keith would rather be than lying on wet rock with the threat of hypothermia looming over him. A campfire, maybe, or the lakeside on a sunny summer day. A flat rock baked by the sun. Friends snuggling obnoxiously close in a tent. Hot sand. Hot springs. Hot arms wrapped around him and laughter in his ear.

A burning flash of embarrassment interrupts _that_ real quick. Keith nearly chokes on his own humiliation, but it works. Steam is already rising off them both, leaving behind a dusty film of salt on the ridiculous expanse of bare skin between them. Lance sighs in relief and it sounds too much like a swoon.

“Will,” says Keith abruptly, bringing his arms up under Lance’s and forcing space between them. A pocket of warm air has formed around them, nebulous and easily provoked by the clawing wind picking up beyond the rocks, but it sticks as stubbornly as Lance, who snorts a laugh.

“Uh, my name’s still Lance.”

“No, I mean the magic.” Strength comes back slow as molasses to Keith’s limbs. He tries to push at Lance but apparently Lance takes this as an invitation to cling closer. Keith is an inch away from panicking. “I-It’s called will.”

“Oh. Like willpower?”

“Y-yeah.”

“You okay?”

“I need air,” wheezes Keith.

“Whoops, sorry,” says Lance, quickly breaking the circle of his arms and allowing Keith to roll away.

Both of them are shivering but it feels like muscle memory. Limb by limb, Keith forces the tension to slip from his body as warmth pervades it. He sits up with the sensation of relief. A quick glance at Lance tells him the same goes for the pirate—and also that their clothes are still soaked.

Keith dons one layer rather hurriedly, allowing it to dry off on his own body as he runs the flat of his palm across the rest. Eventually all the humidity turns their bubble into a sauna, forcing Keith to give up and hand Lance his clothes hot but still damp. 

“I don’t think I can do much about this,” says Keith as he lifts up the gunbelt Lance had ditched along with their clothes. 

Lance grimaces but cinches it around his hips regardless of the futility of wet gunpowder. “They’re still shockingly good for bludgeoning.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Keith inhales a calming breath. “I’d tell you this is your last chance to turn around, but that’d be a lie.”

“As if I would,” replies Lance with a lopsided grin. 

An answering smile pulls at Keith’s mouth before he can help himself. Despite his misgivings, he’s glad he isn’t alone in this. 

Hands resting on sword pommel and sodden guns, Keith and Lance step outside of their bubble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> keith and cold don't mix
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://bitterbeetle.tumblr.com)  
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/bitterbeetle)


End file.
